Celebrate the 2023 Women’s World Cup and the unstoppable rise of England’s legendary Lionesses! Discover the incredible moments and players that have changed the women’s game, including:

– Lily Parr, a trailblazer who scored over 1,000 goals
– Hope Powell, the game-changing coach who transformed the Lionesses
– Rachel Yankey and Kelly Smith, Arsenal’s record-breaking winners
– Beth Mead, who overcame the odds to win the Euros
– Leah Williamson, the captain who won at Wembley

Packed with football facts, tournament stats and player profiles, this brilliant book is essential reading for all young football fans.

The Rise of the Lionesses: Incredible Moments from Women’s Football is a children’s non-fiction book. The book is split into four sections: Early Lionesses, Legendary Lionesses, Triumphant Lionesses, and Lionesses on the Ball.

After the introduction by the author, Flo Lloyd-Hughes, the book moves into the first section, Early Lionesses, and talks about the 2022 Euros before taking the reader back in time. The author takes us on a journey with Nettie Honeyball who was the captain and founder of the British Ladies’ Football Club and played in the 1890s. She also advertised successfully for women to join her team and stated ‘that women are not the ornamental and useless creatures men have pictured.’

Throughout the book, we meet many women just like Nettie who love the game and don’t think it was just a man’s sport, right up to today and the Women’s World Cup 2023.

The book is easy to read and educational. The facts come in two forms, via stories throughout the book or by small squared-off sections within some of the pages. At the back, there is a list of lionesses to watch out for too.

Overall, if you have a child who is into football and would love to learn more about the women’s sport then this is a great book for them to read. It is easy to dip in and out of, the reader doesn’t have to read it in page order, and it is fascinating. For me, the only thing that is missing is some illustrations to make it more appealing to read rather than just pages and pages of text.

Flo Lloyd-Hughes is a football journalist and broadcaster. She has written for the Guardian and The Athletic, and is a regular on Wrighty’s House, the podcast with Ian Wright. Flo has been covering the men’s and women’s game for the last eight years: writing, broadcasting, directing and producing content for the BBC, Sky and talkSport.