Kick with my left foot by Paul Seden

Ill. by Karen Briggs. Allen & Unwin, 2014. ISBN 9781743313442.
(Age: 3-5) Highly recommended. Preschool picture book. Left and right. Football.
In bold colourful pages, the simple tale of a young boy learning to handle the football, and then to kick it, will have enormous appeal to the preschool readers.
At first, he puts on his boots, then he laces them up, each time, telling us quite definitely which foot is which. Each double page shows him achieving a new skill with both his right and left leg or arm. He learns to run, catch and bounce on each side. But when it comes to kicking, he pas a problem. His kick with his right side is a dribble. The ball just falls to the ground, so over the page he kicks with his left foot, and scores a goal.
Through the story, children will learn what is left and right, they will learn to differentiate arms, feet and legs. They will see clearly the procedure needed to get themselves ready for sport, and follow the boy's trials to kick the ball. For beginning readers this story will be fun, as the pages turn to each new skill the boy is learning. The bold print is easy to grasp, and the repetition will make it easier for a beginning reader to predict what will happen. The illustrations are infectious, making any reader involved in the boy's attempts to use the football effectively, and the endpapers show clearly the community in which he lives.
The background in a community with its sparse trees and red dirt oval, gives readers a clue to where it is set, but the attempts by the boy to master the skills are universal.
This book has been produced under the auspices of Allen & Unwin, and the Little Big Book Club, with funding through the Australia Council for the Emerging Indigenous Picture Book Project.
Fran Knight