Guys Read: The Sports Pages

Guys Read: The Sports Pages, put together by Jon Scieszka, is a book of sports stories for 9 year olds where the game is only half of what's going on.

What happens

Scieszka starts by listing every sport he played growing up with five brothers. It's a VERY long list (leg wrestling and speed pizza eating both make it). He also owns up that liking sport doesn't mean you like reading about it.

So can a story change that? Dan Gutman's opens by claiming he won the 1986 World Series. He wasn't playing. He was on a sofa in New Jersey holding a grapefruit.

It's the night the New York Mets came back from the brink against the Boston Red Sox, told pitch by pitch (and Gutman swears every word is true). The grapefruit gets the credit, obviously. You don't need to know a thing about baseball to enjoy a grown man getting superstitious about fruit.

Tim Green's Find Your Fire is a lot more serious. Jake is an enormous eighth-grade lineman, and his coach thinks he's too soft. His best friend Bobby badly needs a scholarship to a top football school, and that school's coach is coming to watch them play.

Then Jake's dad breaks the news. The family business is closing and there's no money for that school now. Suddenly Jake wants the scholarship as well, and the only way to stand out is to go up against Bobby.

It's a really honest story about what happens when friendship and wanting to win pull in different directions. Your reader will probably have strong feelings about who's in the right!

After that, Anne Ursu's story opens on Max, the new kid at a middle school halfway through the year, trying very hard not to be noticed at all.

For a sporty child who isn't a big reader, that mix of writers is a good way in.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Find Your Fire gets rough. The football is very physical, with blood and clawed-up arms in the big practice match, and Bobby threatens to smash Jake's face in. Gutman's story jokes about a player who got the blame for losing and mentions the death threats he was sent. One swear word is shown as symbols.

A child who finds falling out with friends upsetting might struggle with Jake and Bobby. If your reader lives for the match on Saturday morning, they'll recognise a lot of it.

What to read next

If they enjoy hopping between writers, Guys Read: Other Worlds is another collection from the same series, aimed a little older and swapping the pitch for science fiction and fantasy. It opens with Percy Jackson dangling from a billboard over Times Square.