Fifteen-year-old Cal Deane has a chance to make it as a professional footballer. To get there, he’ll have to cope with the loss of his mum and a group of racists. For Cal, the battles off the pitch are far more challenging than any game of football.

Between the Lines perfectly combines visual appeal with carefully chosen content that is both compelling and relevant for teenagers and young adults. The stories feature mature and serious themes, touching on abandonment, addiction, grief, love, war and dystopian futures. With a realistic word count of 5000-6000, imaginative storylines and line spacing to create bite-sized chunks of text, these books are ideal for struggling readers or more able readers who enjoy a quick read.

This hi-lo series for struggling and reluctant readers has been written for children aged between 12 and 15 years, whose current reading age is between 8 and 9 years. These age-appropriate short reads range from 44 to 54 pages and are written by talented authors writing stories with relatable characters.  They incorporate a large font size and text separated into bite-sized chunks, along with carefully considered letter and paragraph spacing that can reduce visual stress. The series has plenty of practice at one level, allowing consolidation of learning before moving on to more challenging reads. 

Iain McLaughlin was born in Dundee on the East coast of Scotland. He still lives there in a house filled with books. He has written more than twenty books and over fifty plays for radio. He has also written short stories and TV scripts. Iain has written for lots of famous characters and shows including James Bond, Doctor Who, Wallace & Gromit and Sherlock Holmes. For a time he was the editor of the Beano comic. He is a life-long supporter of Dundee United and has recently been adopted by a local cat who comes round a few times a week for a free meal. Iain has written a handful of books for Badger Learning, most recently Offside from the highly-anticipated second series of Between the Lines II. He has also written The Lane from their second series of Papercuts, Last Year and Out! from their YA Reads and The First Martian, from their popular Teen Reads series.