Friday Favourites :: 7 January

Welcome to my first Friday Favourites post for 2022. I know I’ve said it before so many times, but I just love these posts – talking about my favourite bits of the week, and the little things that are making us happy really just multiplies the joy for me!
I feel like the first week of January has flown by so quickly! We’ve been back at work (from home) already which has felt a bit weird, and now we are starting to prepare for birthday celebrations as both my partner and daughter have their birthdays this month.

One of my favourite things about this week is that the AFLW season starts tonight! I have talked here before about how much the AFLW competition means to me, and how I love that my daughter will grow up seeing women playing football in a national competition which has gone from strength to strength in each season so far. We’ve been getting in the footy mood a bit this week with some footy reads. Click the titles for more info.

AFL Little LEGENDS by Nicole Hayes and Adrian Beck
This is a sweet, fun series which we first picked up when The Missing Cup was one of the novellas released for Australian Reading Hour (which I posted a bit about here) , and they kept us entertained while we waited for the game to start on Grand Final day.
Speaking of Nicole Hayes, I also loved her YA novel The Whole of My World, which is also centred around footy.

Little Legends follows Oz, Ellie and Sanjay Little, star players for the Fresca Bay Falcons, on a series of hilarious and action-packed adventures that celebrate the great game of Australian Rules.

Nice Girls Don’t Play Footy by Kathy Helidoniotis
Now, this is one where I have to confess I haven’t read it yet – I just couldn’t resist it when I saw it at the Scholastic Book fair last year!

More than anything Devi Sharma wants to win the upcoming BollyOz competition for her mum. Then shell be on her way to becoming Bollywood’s first ever Australian half-Indian, sort of Kiwi, quarter Scottish, Vaisnavi vegan superstar! Then Devi starts AFL lessons at school and she’s surprised to find she has talent…and a feeling she hasn’t had in a long time. Can Devi convince her family to let her play AFL when nice girls don’t play this football and her mum thinks it will risk her winning BollyOz? With the help of her best friend in the whole entire universe, Josie, Devi needs to come up with a plan so she can play footy like she wants and light the fire in her belly once again.

Sporty Kids: Footy! by Felice Arena, illustrated by Tom Jellett
We have a couple of the books in the Sporty Kids series and they are just a lot of fun. They are short enough to read together before bed, simple enough for newly independent readers to read on their own, and engaging enough to be a lot of fun for everyone. I also really appreciate the way the books portray girls and boys as equally sporty and playing together.

Joe marked the footy. He ran with it as fast as he could. Then he handballed to Angus. ‘Dropping the ball!’ shouted the umpire.
Joe is awesome at footy. So why is handballing so hard?

More Than a Kick by Tayla Harris and Jennifer Castles
I reviewed this one last year (check it out here) – it’s such a great read not only about footy but also social media and standing up for yourself.

AFLW player Tayla Harris was at work on the footy field when she kicked a goal. A photo of the kick – taken by Michael Willson – showcased her incredible athletic ability and was posted online. What happened next was an extraordinary turning point in Tayla’s life. The photo quickly became iconic as Tayla stood strong against the online trolls. This is the inspiring story of Tayla’s stellar sporting career so far, and her hard-earned advice to young people navigating the ups and downs of social media.