If you have a child who loves sports then these books by Lisa Wheeler will be a HIT in your house! There is also Dino-Hockey, Dino-Basketball, Dino-Baseball and Dino-Soccer. They also rhyme and you know I love a book that rhymes. 🙂
Not ready to give up the Olympics just yet? This is an adorable story of a pig with a dream, about never giving up….dusting yourself off and trying again…and again…and again.
An interview with the author:
Both of my kids LOVED the Magic Tree House series which we call “the Jack and Annie books” in our house. If you have not discovered this awesome series it involves Jack and Annie who are brother and sister and they have a magic tree house near their house that takes them on adventures to different time periods. What I love about these books is that Jack and Annie’s adventures always begin with a book they have in their tree house and that with each adventure the reader learns a little piece of history. Our kids love the stories and the suspense and are learning all at the same time. LOVE it!
The Magic Tree House series has two books that focus on the Olympics. One is Hour of the Olympics which is about Jack and Annie’s adventures in Ancient Greece during the first Olympics. The second is Ancient Greece and the Olympics which is a non-fiction companion book to Hour of the Olympics.
These books are so fantastically well written and so much fun. I will warn you though, once your kiddo gets started on the Jack and Annie series it’s going to be a while before they read much of anything else. 🙂 There are a lot of these books and they are all fantastic and kids just eat them up.
Another installation in the “I Need a Book for My Boy Who Is Ready for Chapter Book Series”. We recently discovered these at the library and what we like about them is that there are A LOT of them which is great for kids this age. If they can find a series that they really like they will stick with it and read and read and read until they have read through the whole series. These books have short chapters, there are pictures sprinkled throughout the book (about one per chapter) and this series covers just about any sport you can think of and there are books that are geared more towards boys (football, BMX, skateboarding) and ones geared more towards girls (gymnastics, volleyball).
We are smack in the middle of baseball season around here, so it didn’t surprise me when I saw that our youngest had totally ransacked the baseball section of the library shelves. This was my absolute favorite of the bunch. The illustrations are adorable and the story is interlaced with baseball facts. Super cute and fun to read!
If you have a child who loves sports then you need to check out Matt Christopher. He has written fiction books on every sport from baseball to skateboarding to ice hockey to soccer. Since this blog is dedicated to younger readers, it is important to note that he has books that are geared more for the 6-8 year old group and then others that are geared more for the 9-12 year old group. The books that are for the younger set are easier to read and have illustrations every few pages. Also, the books for the older kids do cover some topics that may not be appropriate for the younger set, nothing horrible, but maybe things they just aren’t dealing with socially at school yet…things like that.
If you have a young football fan in your house, then this book might be right up your alley. Written by three members of the famous football family, the Mannings, this book depicts a typical weekend at their house when the boys were growing up. No matter where they were or what they were doing, they always found time for a friendly game of family football.
Prelutsky’s poetry does a great job of capturing the essence of several different sports in this book that is perfect for the preschool and elementary sports enthusiasts in your house. He covers sports like basketball, soccer, football and baseball as well as swimming, frisbee, karate and ice skating to name a few. His poems handle both losing and winning with grace. He also helps kids see that it’s okay to not be good at a sport and even if you’re not good at a sport you can still have fun playing it. These poems are short, fun and have a great rhyme to them.
Loretta and her son, Delmore, each have their own goal. Loretta’s goal is to get her apple tree to grow some apples. Delmore’s goal is to be able to hit a baseball. So all through the spring and summer Loretta tends to her apple trees and Delmore practices his swing. Loretta does get some apples to grow and Delmore does end up hitting the ball, just maybe not where he should have it. Whoopsy!
