Football and literacy

People who slag off the Harry Potter series of books are elitist wankers. JK Rowlings' books may be run of the mill but at least they get the kiddies reading, and any reading is a good thing for children, if only so that one day they may be able to graduate to Ankara's foremost football site of record, which incidently only requires a vocabulary of 310 words ... only ten more than that needed to read The Sun, although the sentences may be quite a bit longer here, as this sentence proves.

Which is a long way of saying I was delighted the other day when Little Oz Kanka (age six) came home with a book from his school library titled "World of Football". Admittedly it is a bit light on the Ankara football scene but I was proud to see that years of me pushing football down his throat meant he had no worries in recognising the word "Uruguay" for example, but he did get stuck on some of the stuff in the glossary of football terms at the end of the book.

As you can see if you click on the picture below, the glossary includes all the stuff you would expect, ie: stadium, trophy, league, foward etc. etc.. But take a look at the second entry. I certainly lifted my eyebrows when I saw that one and it resulted in the following conversation a few minutes ago.

Little Oz: What does this say Daddy, I can't read it.

Big Oz: Err... Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

Little Oz: What does that mean?

Big Oz: Well, it is a disease-type ... thing.

Little Oz: Does it kill you?

Big Oz: It can.

Little Oz: Do you get it from playing football?

Big Oz: No, no. Don't you worry.

Little Oz: How do you get it then?

Big Oz: Do you want to watch the Disney Channel?

Little Oz: Yey! Bye dad. (Little Oz Kanka rushes off to the salon to watch Hannah Montana)

By the way, people who slag off Hanah Montana are elitist wankers.