Jojo and the Winning Play: NABU and NAFA's New Book Turns Flag Football Fans Into Readers

On 8 September 2026, International Literacy Day, NABU and the Nigerian American Football Association (NAFA) officially launched Jojo and the Winning Play, the newest title in NABU's growing Sports and Literacy Collection, written by Matthew Levy and illustrated by Isaac Onyeukwu.

A Story Built Around Flag Football

Jojo and the Winning Play follows a young protagonist discovering flag football, a fast-growing youth sport in Nigeria, and learning that the same qualities that make a good teammate on the field, patience, communication, confidence, are the same ones that make a strong reader. The book was co-created by NABU and NAFA specifically to combine the two: introduce children to the game, and use that excitement to pull them into reading.

It's a book written for a child who might not think of themselves as "a reader" yet, but already knows what it feels like to want to win, to be picked for the team, to try again after a dropped pass. That's the entry point NAFA and NABU built the story around.

Why NAFA

The Nigerian American Football Association has spent years growing flag football at the grassroots level in Nigeria, building a pipeline of young athletes and expanding the sport's reach into schools and communities across the country. Partnering with NABU gave NAFA a way to extend that mission beyond the field: reaching children not just as future athletes, but as readers, in a book that reflects a sport they already know and love.

Part of a Growing Collection

Jojo and the Winning Play joins a collection of NABU sports titles built on the same idea, that a child's passion for a sport is a door into a love of reading. It sits alongside The Big and Magical Basketball Games and Rocket Rukundo's Jungle Escapade, both created with the Basketball Africa League and Visit Rwanda, and Go Akpan, co-created with Olympic Rugby Sevens champion Aaron Grandidier-Nkanang. Each title takes a different sport, and a different country, but asks the same question: what happens when a child sees their own game, their own community, reflected on the page?

What's Next

The 8 September launch is the beginning, not the end, of this initiative. NABU and NAFA are already working on printing and distributing copies of Jojo and the Winning Play to schools across Nigeria, extending the book's reach well beyond the launch event itself.

"When a child already loves a sport, that love is a door into reading, we just have to walk through it with them. That's what this partnership with NAFA does: it takes something Nigerian kids already care about and turns it into their next favorite book."

Camille Park, CEO, NABU

"The biggest problem with flag football then was the cost of scaling. It was hard to scale. Secondary school was very successful, but it was very expensive... So we didn't know how it was possible to scale to the younger generation. This storybook shows how Literacy can help solve this problem and help Flag Football reach kids across the country and Africa at large"

Babajide Akeredolu, NAFA/NFAF President

Read the Book

Jojo and the Winning Play is available now, free, on the NABU Web Reader and NABU App, alongside more than 1,300 titles in 41 languages.

Read on the Web Reader: read.nabu.org

Download the NABU App: nabu.org/download