These links show the original reading lists. Inclusion is not a guarantee of suitability for your child.
Rebecca Stevens - Author
This is a historically grounded coming-of-age story about a girl pursuing football while working in wartime industry. It offers determination, teamwork and questions about who gets opportunities, alongside setbacks when social and institutional attitudes change.
Lily and other factory workers form a women’s football team, while football authorities later declare women’s football unsuitable and restrict access to grounds.CriticalCritical: the book challenges or disapproves of this theme.Critical: the book challenges or disapproves of this theme.
How the book presents it: The restriction is presented as an unfair barrier to the girls’ sporting ambitions.
Talk about: What arguments are used to limit the girls, and how does the story invite you to assess them?
Work and wartime change
Women enter munitions work during the war, then lose jobs when the war ends and men return to the workforce.AmbiguousAmbiguous: the book leaves its position open to more than one reasonable reading.Ambiguous: the book leaves its position open to more than one reasonable reading.
How the book presents it: The book leaves its stance open to more than one reading.
Talk about: How does Lily understand the relationship between earning money, family responsibility and independence?
Persistence and self-realisation
Lily wants to become a goalkeeper and continues pursuing football when the Rockets’ opportunities are threatened.FavourableFavourable: the book presents this theme approvingly or positively.Favourable: the book presents this theme approvingly or positively.
How the book presents it: Lily’s persistence is treated as central to her personal journey, although the consequences of her choices are not fully known.
Talk about: What does Lily learn about herself when her original route to goalkeeping becomes uncertain?
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Why It May Be Worth Reading
It may appeal to readers interested in sport, historical lives and determined protagonists. The story can open discussion about how wartime changes created opportunities for women, and how those opportunities were later restricted.
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What Deserves Attention
The wartime setting includes ammunition work, dangerous physical conditions and the loss of employment and football after the war. Lily’s family circumstances, friendship, romance and emotional highs and lows also merit attention.
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A Conversation Worth Having
How does Lily respond when other people’s rules restrict her ambitions? If the story links work, family responsibility and football, what choices does it invite readers to weigh?
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Reading Approach
Consider reading alongside a short conversation about fairness in sport and changing rules. Pause around the war’s end, when opportunities alter, and invite the reader to distinguish historical attitudes from the book’s treatment of Lily’s choices.
Confidence & Basis
Theme indicators describe how the book presents a topic; they are not a verdict on the whole book or your family's values. Confidence reflects how much book-specific material was checked. Only part of the book information was available, so some details remain unconfirmed.
What remains unconfirmed
Girls’ access to football: The full sequence of events and the ending are not available here.
Work and wartime change: The book’s detailed treatment of working conditions and Lily’s family relationship remains unclear.
Persistence and self-realisation: The ending and the extent of Lily’s eventual success are not established.
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