posted on 15 Jul 2025

Seeing Red by Eve Ainsworth, illustrated by Luna Valentine

This is the third book in Eve Ainsworth’s Lightmoor Lionesses series and once again demonstrates the author’s ability to weave issues of social and personal concern into the very fabric of engaging and pacy stories of young girls with football as their passion. Ainsworth has a background of working in safeguarding in schools and here at the Letterpress Project we’ve reviewed other books of hers that highlight her skill at blending strong supportive messages with drama in readable story form (see reviews here, here and here).

In Seeing Red, Amelia is a young girl who lives for football – it's what she’s good at and what provides her with a stable centre. And it’s something she really needs at the moment because life at home isn’t going too well. Her parents are in the process of splitting up, her dad is moving out of the family home and, consequently, her mother is going to pieces now that it’s just the two of them left to cope alone.

All this is feeding back onto Amelia who is trying to deal with all this and is finding it hard to get to school on time, keep on top of things like housework and is even finding it hard to get to football training on time.

It soon becomes clear that all of this nightmare is going to get out of hand and Amelia, trying hard to keep all this a secret, finds it increasingly difficult to keep her temper as her frustration mounts. She's unhappy that her dad doesn’t seem to realise what she’s going through and all of this comes out on the pitch as she loses form and starts to get too aggressive on the pitch.

Amelia starts to think that she’s letting everybody – her teachers, her team mates and her mom – down. Despite the fact that her friends and her teachers make approaches to try and help, she can’t open up and she’s also reluctant to speak with her dad. Is there any way back for Amelia or will her rage overwhelm her?

Well, you’re going to have to read the book to find out for yourselves because I’m not giving any more away here. Luna Valentine provides the black and white illustrations throughout and the book is guided for readers aged 9+. At the end of the story there are some useful tips for youngsters having problems with feelings of anger and a list of other organisations and websites that might be useful.

Published by Barrington Stoke, who specialise in books for reluctant readers of all kinds, you can get a copy from your local independent bookshop – who will be happy to order it for you if they don’t have it on their shelves.

 

Terry Potter

July 2025