Get it on your Christmas list early.

USA scrumhalf Mike Petri’s children’s book: R is for Rugby, is out and available for sale at http://www.risforrugby.com. 

It all started when Petri and his wife, Lauren, were looking for books for their soon-to-be-born daughter.

“We were finding ourselves in a lot of book stores and trying to find books that shared parts of our lives with her and instilled good values, and one thing I wanted to do was share my experiences as a rugby player with her,” Petri explained. “So it began with my wife and I jokingly over dinner talking about some things I’d like to say and throwing some rhymes back and forth.”

So whenever he could - riding the subway to work or rugby practice, he’d toy with little four-line rhymes about rugby. 

“I was having so much fun doing it, and still then I didn’t know anything would come of it,” added Petri. “I thought it would just be something I’d ready to my daughter and that’d be it.”

Then a chance meeting between Petri and Daniel Glantz, who is AIG’s global head of sponsorship, turned it into something more. In the conversation Petri let slip that he was working on a book. One thing led to another, and suddenly Petri had a publisher and several illustrators submitting proposals.

Screening the illustrators was an interesting episode in itself, as Petri didn’t care for many of the submissions

“Finally they sent me some of Max Thompson’s work, and he nailed what I wanted,” said Petri. The joke was that while Thompson is from Auckland, NZ, he hadn’t played rugby since he was very young and didn’t really follow the game. Petri expected not to have to explain the game, but that’s exactly what he ended up doing.

“He did an outstanding job.”

Writing the book had its speed bumps. For any alphabet, getting some of the less-used letters to work were a challenge. 

“X was pretty tough,” said Petri. “A was a bit tricky too because there were a couple of different directions to go. I think the letters with a lot of options were tough, but I wanted to narrow it down to the topics that would be the most fun, and would fit with great illustrations.”

So the book is out and there for parents to read to their kids, or give to young readers. Petri is a teacher at Xavier HS and he loves the idea of using rugby to promote literacy and learning. But there’s more to it than that.

“Ultimately the goal is to get the game out there for young kids,” said Petri. “To see young kids getting introduced to the game at a young age is amazing. It’s only a matter of time when this game really starts to take off. The people who reap the benefits are those who are playing as adults 20 years from now. So to use it to introduce it to kids at the beginning I think will help the game. Hopefully it has that ripple effect, with young kids asking their parents to put them in a rugby program, and more parents looking for rugby programs.”