Perhaps this is churlish, but I'm not at all sure about this book club thing.
The free school meals idea worked because the government is/was not providing the money to allow schools to provide meals. Rashford's genius move was to get the government to cough up cash money, in the context of an existing infrastructure that (I assume) just needed a bit of a tweak to keep going in the school holidays, while not being overtly political. (I have no idea if he does his own social media, or if he has a PR team of 20 people headed by someone from Labour HQ --- either way he did a masterful job on this.)
But what is the premise of the book club (for which he has "
teamed up with Macmillan Children's Books")?
The implication seems to be that currently, schools are not encouraging children to read enough. But I'm not sure how well that's going to go down with teachers. Presumably some of them would argue that they would do just fine if they had the money to provide more books, perhaps a bit less curriculum time devoted to Gove's jingoism, and proper funding of public libraries. But the book club is going to provide its own content, and it seems that it's not exactly going to be a cornucopia of imaginative fiction:
Metro wrote:The first book in the project will be published in May 2021 and will be called: ‘YOU ARE A CHAMPION: Unlock Your Potential, Find Your Voice And Be The BEST You Can Be’. Aimed at young people aged between 11 and 16, each chapter will begin with a story from Marcus’ own life and will cover subjects like the value of education, positive mentality, understanding culture, and female role models. It will be co-created with Carl Anka, a journalist for sports media group The Athletic, and performance psychologist Katie Warriner.
This feels to me a bit like if Rashford had attacked the school meals problem by teaming up with Jamie Oliver to open a chain of low-cost restaurants. I worry slightly that it will rebound, or fizzle out, or be spun (by its opponents) as a billion-dollar publishing company jumping on his bandwagon.