Soccer book series in reading order

by Alex Morgan

Alex Morgan is the name on the Kicks series, 13 children's soccer stories catalogued from 2013 to 2021 for grades 3 to 5. Saving the Team (2013) opens the list, and Sabotage Season, Win or Lose, Hat Trick, Under Pressure and In the Zone follow. Fans in the Stands (2021) is the most recent. Subject tags cover friendship, teamwork, schools, family life, self-confidence and California. The sourced record describes Alex Morgan, born 2 July 1989, as an American former professional soccer player who won the FIFA Women's World Cup in 2015 and 2019.

Tom Palmer is a British children's author from Leeds whose interest in reading began with football articles. After university Palmer worked in libraries and bookshops, then published a first book in 2002, If You're Proud to Be a Leeds Fan. Foul Play, Palmer's first children's book for Puffin, was shortlisted for the 2009 Blue Peter Book of the Year Award. Palmer wrote a new Roy of the Rovers book in 2018, won the Ruth Rendell Award in 2019 and published a 50th book in 2020. Series include Football Academy, Rugby Academy, Football Detective, Soccer Diaries, Conkers and Roy Of The Rovers, and subjects include soccer, bullying and missing persons.

Sport drives Rich Wallace's fiction for young readers. Basketball and soccer supply most of the plots, with teamwork, sportsmanship, competition and self-confidence among the listed subjects, across the Winning Season, Kickers, Game Face and Up2u series. Wallace's 43 catalogued books start at Riding Time and Wrestling Sturbridge in 1996 and end with Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones and the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men (2021). Volumes are short, at a median of 117 pages.

Jan and Stan Berenstain wrote picture books about the Berenstain Bears. The run begins with The Big Honey Hunt (1962) and reaches 400 titles by The Berenstain Bears: Father's Day Blessings (2018). Family life, school, brothers and sisters, scouting, Christmas and Christian life supply the recurring subjects, and many of the books are told in rhyme. A median length of 32 pages places them with early readers. Publication peaked in the 1990s and the catalogue is likely complete.

Jonathan Wilson, born in 1976, is an English sports journalist and author who writes mainly about football. Wilson writes predominantly for The Guardian, is a columnist for World Soccer, and founded and edits The Blizzard; in 2024 Wilson started the football history podcast It Was What it Was with Rob Draper. The catalogue lists 17 books from 2006 to 2025, including Inverting the Pyramid: The History of Football Tactics (2008), The Anatomy of England: A History in Ten Matches (2010), Brian Clough: Nobody Ever Says Thank You (2011), The Outsider: A History of the Goalkeeper (2012) and Angels With Dirty Faces: The Footballing History of Argentina (2016). Catalogue subjects record soccer history, biography and Sunderland Football Club.

Alex Ferguson is catalogued with 8 books, filed under subjects including soccer, soccer managers, Manchester United and biography. The listing opens with Just Champion! (1993) and continues through A Year in the Life (1995), A Will to Win (1997) and Managing My Life (1999). The Unique Treble followed in 2001, Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography in 2013 and Leading in 2015. Games of My Life carries a 2026 date and is the newest entry. Seven of the 8 books record a page count, with a median of 288 pages.

Paul Stewart

79 books• 13 series

Paul Stewart, born June 1955, writes children's books and works with the illustrator Chris Riddell on three series: The Edge Chronicles, the Free Lance novels and Far-Flung Adventures. The catalogue begins with The Thought Domain (1988) and The Weather Witch (1989). Stewart's other series include Blobheads, Football Mad, Muddle Earth Trilogy, Barnaby Grimes, Wyrmeweald and Spinechillers. Fantasy, quests, knights and soccer stories are among the subjects.

Mary Pope Osborne

166 books• 9 series

Mary Pope Osborne, born May 20, 1949, is an American children's author and audiobook narrator best known for the Magic Tree House series, which had sold more than 134 million copies worldwide by 2017. Awards have gone to both the series and Osborne, including recognition for work promoting children's literacy. Osborne attended the University of North Carolina and published a first book in 1982. The catalogue counts 166 Osborne books, from Run, Run, As Fast As You Can (1982) to Sea Otter Sunrise (2025). Time travel, tree houses, history, folklore and Greek mythology appear among the subjects.

Nancy Krulik writes for children, and the catalogue lists Grades 1-3 as the reading level. Series credited to Krulik include Katie Kazoo, Switcheroo, How I Survived Middle School, Magic Bone, Princess Pulverizer and Project Droid, and George Brown, Class Clown appears among the characters. Subjects range across magic, schools, friendship, dogs, robots and humorous stories. The most recent listed book is Fangs for Having Us! (2021), and the catalogue marks the output as dormant.

Mike Lupica, born May 11, 1952, is an American author and former newspaper columnist known for sports commentary in the New York Daily News and for appearances on ESPN. The catalogue lists 64 books, from Reggie (1985) to Framed (2026). Children's fiction about basketball, football and baseball fills much of the subject list, along with twins, friendship and fathers and sons. Series include Zach & Zoe Mysteries, Comeback Kids, Home Team, Peter Finley and Danny Walker/Travel Team.

David Downing

37 books• 5 series

David Downing, born 1946, is a British author of mystery novels and nonfiction whose fiction depicts World War II and Berlin. The John Russell espionage thrillers, known as the Station Series, follow an Anglo-American character in 1940s Germany and take their titles from railway stations, most of them in Berlin. Jack McColl is a second series. The 37 catalogued books begin with Future Rock (1976) and include titles on film actors such as Clint Eastwood (1977), and Union Station (2024) is the newest.

David Walliams

56 books• 6 series

Born David Edward Williams on 20 August 1971, David Walliams is an English actor, comedian, writer and television personality. Walliams rose to fame with Matt Lucas on the BBC sketch shows Little Britain (2003–2006) and Come Fly with Me (2010–2011), judged Britain's Got Talent from 2012 to 2022, and wrote and starred in the sitcom Big School. Walliams's children's books have sold more than 50 million copies. The catalogue lists 56 titles from Inside Little Britain (2006) to The World’s Worst Superheroes (2025), including The Boy in the Dress (2008), Mr Stink (2009), Billionaire Boy (2010), Gangsta Granny (2011) and Awful Auntie (2014).

Nick Hornby

24 books• 1 series

Nick Hornby is an English writer of novels, memoir and criticism. Fever Pitch (1992) is the memoir that opens the catalogue; High Fidelity (1995) and About a Boy (1998) are the novels that followed, and all three were adapted as feature films. Music, sport and obsessive protagonists recur. Stuff I've Been Reading is his one named series, and books about reading run through the list, The Polysyllabic Spree (2004) among them. Hornby has been nominated twice for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, for An Education (2009) and Brooklyn (2015). His 25 catalogued books reach Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius (2022), with Cash Out scheduled for 2027.

Carolyn Keene is a Stratemeyer Syndicate pen name, the credit on the Nancy Drew mysteries. Mildred Wirt Benson, one of the writers behind the name, used it from 1929 to 1953 and contributed to 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. The catalogue lists 647 Carolyn Keene books, beginning with The Secret of the Old Clock, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery (all 1930) and reaching Vans & Villains (2026). Series include Nancy Drew Mystery Stories, Nancy Drew Files, Nancy Drew and the Clue Crew, Nancy Drew Diaries, Nancy Drew: Girl Detective and Dana Girls Mystery Stories.

Michael Morpurgo

171 books• 5 series

Sir Michael Morpurgo, born 5 October 1943, is an English author, poet, playwright and librettist best known for children's novels such as War Horse (1982). Morpurgo served as the third Children's Laureate from 2003 to 2005 and is President of BookTrust, a children's reading charity. Recurring themes include outsiders who triumph, survival and bonds with nature, set in places such as the Cornish coast and the First World War trenches. The catalogue holds 171 books from It Never Rained (1974) to Down Burrow Lane (2026), including the Mudpuddle Farm series.

Morris Gleitzman

52 books• 8 series

Morris Gleitzman is an Australian children's and young adult novelist. Two Weeks with the Queen (1990) drew attention to AIDS in children's fiction. Gleitzman co-wrote several series with Paul Jennings, among them Wicked!, which became an animated series in 2000, and he has collected three volumes of his newspaper columns for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald as books for adults. Earlier still, Gleitzman wrote for the Norman Gunston Show. The subject tags name the Second World War, Jews, stepfamilies and humorous stories, and the catalogue holds 52 titles ending with Always (2021).

Tracey West, born October 1, 1965, is a children's author who writes for licensed series such as Pokémon and SpongeBob SquarePants. The catalogue lists 356 titles from 1988 to 2027, reaching Heart of the Ruby Dragon (2026), with Claw of the Diamond Dragon due in 2027. Named series include Pokémon chapter books, novelizations and readers, Naruto Chapter Books, LEGO Ninjago Reader, Bakugan Chapter Books, Pixie Tricks, Pet Vet Club and Scream Shop Pick Your Path. Dragon Masters and Heroes in Training appear as recurring lines. Ninja, dragons and plot-your-own stories appear among the subject headings.

Gertrude Chandler Warner (April 16, 1890 to August 30, 1979) was an American author who wrote mostly for children. Warner wrote the original book of The Boxcar Children, published in 1942, and the next 18 books in the series. Earlier catalogued titles include The House of Delight (1916) and The World in a Barn (1927), and Surprise Island (1949) and The Yellow House Mystery (1952) came after The Boxcar Children. Orphans, brothers and sisters, and mystery stories are among the subjects. The catalogue also carries Boxcar Children lines such as Adventures of Benny and Watch and Boxcar Children Great Adventure under Warner's name.

Gertrude Warner and various authors after 1979 is the credit carried by 45 Boxcar Children mystery books in the catalogue, published between 1994 and 2024. Subjects name the Boxcar Children, orphans, brothers and sisters, adventure and children's mystery fiction. Titles include The Canoe Trip Mystery (1994), The Mystery Bookstore (1995), The Soccer Mystery (1997), The Mystery of the Orphan Train (2005) and Secret of Superstition Mountain (2024).

Sherryl Clark's catalogue of 45 books runs from The Too Tight Tutu (1997) to For All the Dead Girls (2026). Subjects include children's fiction, pirates, schools, girls, blogs, birthdays, soccer and investigative journalists. Titles include Successful Self-Publishing (1998), The Littlest Pirate (2002) and Pirates of Quentaris (2006). Series include Our Australian Girl: Rose, Ellyse Perry, Legends in Their Own Lunchbox, Judi Westerholme and Lou Alcott.

Josh Lacey, born in London in 1968, is a British writer of children's books who also publishes as Joshua Doder. One adult title sits in the catalogue: God Is Brazilian (2005), a biography of Charles Miller, the man who brought football to Brazil. The children's books run to 27 catalogued titles dated 2004 to 2021, with dragons, pets, islands and adventure among the recorded subjects, in series including Dragonsitter, Misfitz Mysteries, Hope Jones and Tom Trelawney.

David Klass

21 books• 1 series

Teenagers in crisis are a frequent subject of David Klass's novels. Klass is an American novelist and screenwriter who has written more than 40 screenplays for Hollywood studios, most of them character-driven adult thrillers, and 14 young adult novels. The catalogue lists 21 books from The Atami Dragons (1984) to Out of Time (2020). Sports run through titles such as Breakaway Run, Wrestling with Honor and A Different Season, and Klass also writes the Caretaker series.

Kevin Sampson is a British novelist based in Birkenhead, Merseyside, best known for Awaydays (1998), Powder (1999) and Stars are Stars (2006). The crime thriller The Killing Pool was published by Cape on 21 March 2013. DCI Billy McCartney is the listed series. Catalogue subjects for the 10 books include soccer, violence in sports, sports spectators and English social life. Extra Time (1998), Leisure (2000) and Clubland (2002) are among the other titles, and The House on the Hill (2014) is the newest.