Kick (not in NZSO - another one you need to buy though!)

[Jane]

Budi is 13 and lives in Jakarta, loves football and Real Madrid, and goes to work 6 days a week at the local sweatshop making football boots - boots that may end up on the feet of his idols, professional European footballers. His dream is to become a professional footballer himself and he is endearingly naive enough to think this will happen. Thankfully he lives with his loving family in an apartment (in a crumbling tower block) and his father has a job, but even so they are a poor enough that every Friday there is no money left for dinner. Budi knows many people worse off though, including the family of his friend Rochy, whose sisters spend their days at the local dump looking for food scraps or things to sell. Budi's precarious position takes a turn for the worse when he falls foul of the local moneylender and gangster, the Dragon. Now Budi's life is on the line and he must make some heart breaking decisions. This thought provoking book, endorsed by Amnesty International, is ideal for the Inquiry topics like Fair Trade or Child Labour. It highlights the inequalities that exist in the world, eloquently demonstrated by Budi's smarter friend Rochy who calculates that it takes a professional footballer just 100 seconds to earn the equivalent monthly wage of child labourers, like Budi, who make the boots. Although this is a heavy topic, there is humour in this book and it will appeal to all sorts of readers, including football fans and lovers of suspense and action stories. Highly recommended.