Bellos, Alex – The Bell Bookshop

Football School Facts

Emma — Thu, 28 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Packed with stats, facts and trivia and funny illustrations this is the perfect gift for any young football fan.

“We love this book series!” Match of the Day Weekly

It is time to kick off a year of fact-tastic football! Packed with over 365 incredible stories, stats, goals and birthdays, there’s an amazing new football fact to discover every day of the year. Learn about your favourite players, great goals, super stadiums, marvellous mascots and much, much more! Illustrated throughout with hilarious cartoons, Football School Facts is the perfect gift for all young fans and their families to enjoy.

“Intelligent, inspiring, funny!” Head of Education, Premier League on the Football School series

Think Twice

Emma — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

‘A brilliant collection of puzzles’
G.T. Karber, author of MURDLE

*** From Alex Bellos, creator of the Guardian‘s Monday Puzzle ***

I hope you get every puzzle in this book wrong.
I’m being honest. The more you answer incorrectly, the more fun you will have . . .

Guardian puzzle master Alex Bellos knows better than anyone that the puzzles we find irresistible are the ones that deceive us. Those that seem blindingly, obviously simple – and yet we can’t help but get wrong.

These 70 confounding puzzles – which Alex has scoured from across psychology, mathematics, statistics, physics, geography, the science of perception and more – are guaranteed to catch you off guard. But why are you getting them wrong? And how can you get them right?

In Think Twice, Alex delights in tripping us up and then returning us to our feet, explaining how these puzzles work, the biases holding us back – and how to train your brain to avoid being hoodwinked again.

Think once and you will stumble.
Think twice and you are in with a chance.
Now that you’ve been warned, can you prove Alex wrong?

The football school encyclopedia

Emma — Thu, 05 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

A fun and essential guide to the world of football and an incredible gift for young fans.
Discover everything you’ve EVER wanted to know about football, from fascinating facts about your favourite players and clubs, to incredible international stats and terrific trivia. Packed with hilarious illustrations, this encyclopedia is anything but boring! Learn about all aspects of the game, including the positions, rules, mascots, nicknames, trophies and tournaments and laugh loads along the way. Brought to you by the bestselling creators of the Football School series, this book is a joyful celebration of the beautiful game.

The Greatest Ever Quiz Book

Emma — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Test your football knowledge with over 300 funny and fascinating questions about the beautiful game.
How much do you know about football – and the world? Test yourself and your friends with over 300 brain-busting questions from Football School. Discover questions on star strikers, crafty coaches, momentous matches and much, much more. Packed with hilarious cartoons and fascinating trivia, this spin-off from the bestselling series is the perfect way for fans to learn more about the beautiful game.

The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book

Emma — Thu, 07 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000

From the bestselling author of Alex’s Adventures in Numberland and Can You Solve My Problems? comes a fascinating, hugely entertaining collection of puzzles for crossword addicts and language-lovers of all stripes.

‘The only puzzle book I’ve seen that manages to befuddle both sides of the brain at the same time.’
DARA Ã BRIAIN

‘Such fun, full of unexpected ideas and charmingly written.’
TIM HARFORD

The Language Lover’s Puzzle Book is a book of more than 100 surprising and entertaining puzzles that celebrate the amazing diversity of the world of words and language.

Featuring a huge variety of ancient, modern and even invented languages, this collection of problems will introduce you to unusual alphabets and scripts, curious vocabularies and phonologies, and global variations in simple behaviours like counting, telling the time, and naming children.

Whether you are a crossword solver, a code-breaker or a Scrabble addict, these puzzles are guaranteed to twist your tongue and sharpen your mind.

‘Alex Bellos is a dazzling polymath whose cleverness and ingenuity are on full display in this utterly brilliant and original collection of linguistic puzzles. This book is destined to be a classic for puzzle lovers.’
JOSHUA FOER, co-founder of Atlas Obscura and author Moonwalking with Einstein

‘An irresistible linguistic workout – challenging and deeply satisfying.’
GASTON DORREN, author of Lingo and Babel

‘For all the language and puzzle fans in your life!’ GRETCHEN McCULLOCH
‘A cornucopia of ingenious and insightful challenges.’ DAVID CRYSTAL
‘This compendium of puzzles is a great idea.’ MICHAEL ROSEN
‘You’ll love what Alex Bellos has done here.’ GYLES BRANDRETH
‘Tantalisting.’ THE ECONOMIST
‘The perfect way to pass the time.’ BBC SCIENCE FOCUS

Terrific Teams

Emma — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Football School Terrific Teams is part of the bestselling Football School series, which teaches you about the world through football, packed with superstar stories, fun facts and laugh-out-loud illustrations. Perfect for readers 7+ and recommended by the National Literacy Trust, BookTrust, the Premier League and parents and teachers.

Discover the incredible true stories behind the most famous clubs in history.

Find out the stories behind the most legendary clubs in football history, such as Manchester United, Real Madrid and Liverpool. Explore how these teams have overcome failure and tragedy to win leagues and lift trophies and enter the record books. Also discover fascinating facts about more unknown clubs, including the German team with skull and crossbones logo and the most eco-friendly club in the world. Perfect for fans of Football School: Star Players and Football School: Epic Heroes, this collection of fifty true stories is a must-read for any young football fan.

“We love this book series!” Match of the Day Weekly

“Intelligent, inspiring, funny” Head of Education, Premier League

Collect the series!

Football School Season 1–4
Star Players
Epic Heroes
Football School Terrific Teams
20 Fantastic Football Stories
The Amazing Quiz Book
The Incredible Joke Book
The Ultimate Puzzle Book
The Greatest Ever Quiz Book – out in 2022!

Epic heroes

Emma — Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Football School Epic Heroes is part of the bestselling Football School series, which teaches you about the world through football, packed with superstar stories, fun facts and laugh-out-loud illustrations. Perfect for readers 7+ and recommended by the National Literacy Trust, BookTrust, the Premier League and parents and teachers

Celebrate the greatest names and teams in football history with this collection of 50 true stories.

Discover the greatest football moments of all time in this collection of 50 exciting stories, perfect for fans of Football School: Star Players. Discover the incredible stories of heroes such as Messi, Ronaldo, Klopp and Rapinoe, but also the tales of the dog that helped win the league for his team and the team who won the championship with the very final kick of the game. Bringing together the best names in the game with some truly weird, wonderful and hilarious occurrences, this book is a must-read for any young football fan.

“We love this book series!” Match of the Day Weekly

“Intelligent, inspiring, funny” Head of Education, Premier League

Collect the series!

So You Think You’ve Got Problems?: Surprising and Rewarding Puzzles To Sharpen Y

Emma — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Thought you had it bad? In this book, you will be:

Imprisoned by a sadistic logician.
Challenged to raise dogs from the dead.
Trapped on a burning island.
And much more besides . . .

Everything is at stake in this compendium of more than 150 ingenious puzzles, selected to reveal the wonderful diversity of brainteasers that have confounded and intrigued solvers for the last thousand years. You’ll need to pit your wits against probability problems, wrestle with wordplay, grapple with geometry and scrabble for survival.

Along the way you will discover stories of whip-smart thinkers, eccentric novelists and a poodle with allegedly supernatural powers. You will absorb fascinating and important mathematical ideas. Some solutions will rely on ingenuity, some will challenge you to spot hidden patterns, others call for extreme rationality. All will surprise, entertain and stretch your brain.

Will you make it out with your puzzling pride intact?

Football School Star Players

Emma — Thu, 02 May 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Football School Star Players is part of the bestselling Football School series, which teaches you about the world through football, packed with superstar stories, fun facts and laugh-out-loud illustrations. Perfect for readers 7+ and recommended by the National Literacy Trust, BookTrust, the Premier League and parents and teachers.

Get young fans dreaming big with this incredible collection of inspirational lives from the world of football.

What made Pele the greatest player of all time? How did Harry Kane overcome the odds to win the Golden Boot? What is the secret behind Lionel Messi’s outstanding success? And why is Megan Rapinoe so fearless in her beliefs? This collection of fifty biographies brings together the incredible true stories of the game’s greatest legends who changed the world of football. Empowering and inspirational, this is the perfect book to get young fans dreaming big both on and off the pitch.

“We love this book series!” Match of the Day Weekly

“Intelligent, inspiring, funny” Head of Education, Premier League

Collect the series!