The Phantom Striker

Wood End are the worst team in the league. The coach is desperate and the team is depressed. Until one day, when a strange meeting in the school grounds leads to unexpected success.

This is an incredibly accessible series for reluctant readers. The First Flight collection offers a variety of different text types including fiction, plays and poetry, so is well placed to cater for many interests and abilities. Stories range from bikers and surfing to ghosts, monsters, and aliens on Earth.

This hi-lo series for struggling and reluctant readers has been written for children aged between 7 and 13 years, whose current reading age is between 6 and 6.5 years. These age-appropriate short reads have 32 pages and are written by brilliant authors writing stories with relatable characters. They incorporate a large font size and text separated into bite-sized chunks, along with carefully considered letter and paragraph spacing that can reduce visual stress. The series has plenty of practice at one level, allowing consolidation of learning before moving on to more challenging reads.