Exposure (Paul Faustino Book 3)

"I’ll start with the Mal Peet. Mal Peet is one of my favourite authors. I just love his stuff. He’s written three football books, Keeper , Penalty and Exposure , and it was quite difficult choosing which one to talk about here. But when I started re-reading Exposure again it floored me. I’d forgotten how great it was. It’s a story about a professional footballer who’s black and marries a white pop singer. It tackles big subjects like racism, social inequality and fame – real life issues. I talk to kids in schools and I’m struck particularly by the way they can access the media these days. They’re always talking about Trump and whatever else happens to be in the news, and you kind of detect there’s an anxiety there about the world. They’re less protected from that than kids were when I was growing up, and I think books – like Exposure – are a great place to discuss difficult subjects in a very measured way. “It tackles big subjects like racism, social inequality and fame – real life issues” It also explores celebrity and the cost of fame. We live in such a celebrity-obsessed world. A lot of young people I meet talk about their ambitions, and some of them just want to be “famous”. I think this book raises interesting questions about that kind of desire. At the same time it’s simply a great story – a real page turner. Once you start reading it you can’t stop."