Venessa Taylor is a People’s Book Prize winner (Children’s Category, 2021) and bestselling author of Baller Boys, the first book in the Baller Boys series, published by prize-winning indie publishing house focused on diversity and inclusion, Hashtag Press.
Discover Venessa Taylor
Venessa brings two decades of experience as an inner-city primary school teacher and assistant headteacher to the creation of the Baller Boys series. Aimed at encouraging young boys to find pleasure in reading, the football-themed stories are written with young readers in mind.
Born and raised in London, Venessa continues her legacy and passion as a literacy leader through her creative writing.
Venessa also surpassed all expectations in raising the literary engagement across her school and improved all overall reading attainment.
Venessa researched and identified what students would respond best to in terms of content, characters and setting. She soon realised that what the boys wanted to read about was not readily available, so took the challenge upon herself to inspire and encourage more young people–boys in particular–to read.
Statistics consistently show a widening gender gap in the proportion of boys reaching the expected standard in reading at the end of Key Stage 2.
Venessa wrote Baller Boys as a way of bringing different health and social challenges faced by school-age children (such as culture and identity, having a non-traditional family, religion and special educational needs) into a more empowered light, all within the unifying setting of a team sport.
Her books reflect the diversity and embracing spirit found in local communities, while subtly showing some of the different lives and challenges faced by each child and their family.
With her family’s input and insight from the children she has taught over the years, Venessa is proud to have crafted an authentic, original, inclusive series that she hopes all young readers will enjoy–in and out of school!
Discover more sports books to inspire here!