I have done my auntly duty flattening my tail-feathers on benches and bleachers, gotten eye and neck strain from trying to see a 9-year-old out in right field, been rained on, sunburned and eaten alive by a mosquito or two watching nephews playing sports. And while I can tell the difference between a puck and the goalie (usually) and which football Americans vs. Europeans are talking about, I am not a sports person. However, the other day, one of the publishes sent me a large, (shiny!) green package with some recently published books. One of those was Home Run, Touchdown, Basket, Goal!: Sports Poems for Little Athletes by Leo Landry.
And most of these books were poetry. Usually a hard sell to kids, but this time maybe not. Do you have a kid who likes sports but not necessarily poetry? This is a way to show them poems can be and are fun. While aimed at that four to eight-year-old group (the younger end of the scale will need assistance with the words, obviously, but the older child can start to read on their own). However, I can see a teacher in a middle-school class using this as well.
The rhyming text sometimes was a bit too much for me (I am of the school of thought that poetry does not have to rhyme) yet, it helps keep the attention of the kids. The illustrations, also by Landry, have an innocent appeal to them and you see a variety of races and both boys and girls are playing