Sports Stories

EASY FICTION
EASY BUZZEO, T.	Little Loon and Papa by Toni Buzzeo. Motivated by a challenging situation and his supportive father, little Loon finally learns to dive.
EASY FINCHLER, J.	You’re a Good Sport, Miss Malarkey by Judy Finchler. The children on a newly formed soccer team love their coach, Miss Malarky, who doesn’t know much about the game except how to make it fun, but the school principal and parents have other ideas.
EASY HEST, A.	Make the Team, Baby Duck! by Amy Hest. When Baby Duck is not sure she is ready to get into the pool with the swim team, her grandfather encourages her.
EASY HOPKINSON, D.	Girl Wonder: a Baseball Story in Nine Innings by Deborah Hopkinson. In the early 1900s, Alta Weiss, a young woman who knows from an early age that she loves baseball, finds a way to show that she can play, even though she is a girl.
EASY JOHNSON, A.	Just Like Josh Gibson by Angela Johnson. A young girl’s grandmother tells her of her love for baseball and the day they let her play in the game even though she was a girl.
EASY NOBLE, T.	Jimmy’s Boa and the Bungee Jump Slam Dunk by Trinka Hakes Noble. Jimmy’s boa constrictor creates havoc in his gym class and his antics lead to the formation of an unusual basketball team.
EASY REX, M.	Dunk Skunk by Michael Rex. Sport actions rhyme with the names of animals who love to play, such as Goal Mole, Dunk Skunk, and Hurdle Turtle.
EASY ROCKWELL, A.	Chip and the Karate Kick by Anne Rockwell. Chip starts taking karate lessons to be like the hero of his favorite television show, but his impatience to earn a belt gets in the way of learning the true spirit of karate.
EASY STADLER, A.	Beverly Billingsly Can’t Catch by Alexander Stadler. When Beverly and Oliver, who do well in school but not on the softball field, set out to become better players, they get some pointers from their favorite librarian and spend a lot of time practicing.
EASY TAVARES, M.	Oliver’s Game by Matt Tavares. Oliver’s grandfather tells him the story of how he almost joined the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
EASY WILSON, S.	Big Day on the River by Sarah Wilson. Willie’s relatives bring her so many provisions for her rafting trip that she almost does not get to go
A Sampling of Fiction Material
FICTION BASKIN, N.	Basketball (or Something Like It) by Nora Raleigh Baskin. Hank, Nathan, Jeremy, and Anabel deal with the realities of middle school basketball, including family pressure, a series of coaches with very different personalities and agendas, and what it means to be a team and a friend.
FICTION BILDNER, P.	Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy by Phil Bildner. Shoeless Joe Jackson, said by some to be the greatest baseball player ever, goes into a hitting slump just before he is to start his minor league career, so he asks his friend to make him a special bat to help him hit.
FICTION BLEDSOE, L.	Hoop Girlz by Lucy Jane Bledsoe. When ten-year-old River, who is crazy about basketball, is not chosen to play in the tournament set up in the town of Azalea, Oregon, she decides to organize a team of her own and accepts the help of her older brother.
FICTION BRUCHAC, J.	The Warriors by Joseph Bruchac. Jake has left the reservation for Weltimore Academy and entered a different world. Everyone there loves lacrosse, but no one understands it the way Jake does, as an Iroquois, and no one understands Jake either.
FICTION CHRISTOPHER, M.	Wild Ride by Matt Christopher. Knowing that the mountain trails are unsafe for bicycles due to fallen trees and other obstacles, Jonas helps organize a clean-up crew in early spring, but when he hears someone else biking on the trail he cannot resist a ride of his own.
FICTION CLARK, C.	Hill Hawk Hattie by Clara Gillow Clark. Angry and lonely after her mother dies, eleven-year-old Hattie pretends to be a boy and joins her father on an adventure-filled rafting trip down the Delaware River in the late 1800s to transport logs from New York to Philadelphia.
FICTION COONEY, D.	I Know Who Likes You by Doug Cooney. When Swimming Pool’s mother insists she graduate from charm school or give up baseball, Ernie, who is the reluctant team manager, and Dusty, the catcher, pull together to help the team and their friend.
FICTION CORBETT, S.	Free Baseball by Sue Corbett. Angry with his mother for having too little time for him, eleven-year-old Felix takes advantage of an opportunity to become bat boy for a minor league baseball team, hoping to someday be like his father, a famous Cuban outfielder. Includes glossaries of baseball terms and Spanish words and phrases.
FICTION COREY, S.	Players in Pigtails by Shana Corey. Katie Casey, a fictional character, helps start the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which gave women the opportunity to play professional baseball while America was involved in World War II.
FICTION GREEN, T.	Football Genius by Tim Green. Troy, a sixth-grader with an unusual gift for predicting football plays before they occur, attempts to use his ability to help his favorite team, the Atlanta Falcons, but he must first prove himself to the coach and players.
FICTION GUTMAN, D.	The Million Dollar Putt by Dan Gutman. Assisted by his neighbor, Birdie, blind thirteen-year-old Ed “Bogie” Bogard will win one million dollars if he can sink a ten-foot putt in Hawaii’s fifth annual Angus Killick Memorial Tournament.
FICTION HAVEN, P.	Two Hot Dogs with Everything by Paul Haven. Although everyone credits him and his superstitions for the Slugger’s first winning streak in 108 baseball seasons, eleven-year-old Danny Gurkin believes that his discovery of a secret from the team’s past may be the real reason behind the ball club’s success.
FICTION JENNINGS, P.	Out Standing in My Field by Patrick Jennings. Although fifth-grader Ty Cutter is named after baseball great Ty Cobb, he is the worst player on the Brewer’s team, which happens to be coached by his overly-competitive father.
FICTION KOCH, E.	Eddie: Harold’s Little Brother by Ed Koch. Eddie wants to be like his big brother, a very good athlete, but is not good at sports, so Harold helps him discover how to use his own special talent - talking.
FICTION LORBIECKI, M.	Jackie’s Bat by Marybeth Lorbiecki. Joey, the batboy for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, learns a hard lesson about respect for people of different races after Jackie Robinson joins the team.
FICTION LUPICA, M.	Heat by Mike Lupica. Pitching prodigy Michael Arroyo is on the run from social services after being banned from playing Little League baseball because rival coaches doubt he is only twelve years old and he has no parents to offer them proof.
FICTION JR-HI MACKEL, K.	MadCat by Kathy Mackel. Fast-pitch softball catcher MadCat Campione’s love for the sport and her relationship with her best friends is strained when her team competes on a national level.
FICTION MANTELL, P.	Stealing Home by Paul Mantell. Joey is sure he will not get along with the exchange student from Nicaragua who is staying with his family for a year, but they find common ground on the baseball field.
FICTION MCEWAN, J.	Willy the Scrub by Jamie McEwan. Willy and his friends have just started 5th grade and they want to be part of the ‘in’ crowd, the jocks. The fall football season leaves Willy a benchwarmer, or scrub, but he goes out for wrestling in the winter and things begin to change.
FICTION PARATORE, C.	Mack McGinn’s Big Win by Coleen Paratore. Whether the prize is a soccer trophy or the esteem of Danville’s elite, the McGinn family believes in winning, but while striving to prove he can be best at something, sixth-grader Mack inadvertently demonstrates to his parents and older brother what really matters most.
FICTION REPKA, J.	The Stupendous Dodgeball Fiasco by Janice Repka. Eleven-year-old Phillip’s dream of running away from the circus comes true when his parents allow him to stay with relatives in Hardington, Pennsylvania, where dodgeball is practically a religion and life is anything but normal.
FICTION RICHARDSON, C.	The Real Slam Dunk by Charisse K. Richardson. Ten-year-old Marcus plans to become a professional basketball player, but when he, his twin sister, and their classmates meet a real star on a school field trip, they learn the importance of dreaming more than one career dream.
FICTION ROBERTS, K.	My Thirteenth Season by Kristi Roberts. Already downhearted due to the loss of her mother and her father’s overwhelming grief, thirteen-year-old Fran decides to give up her dream of becoming the first female in professional baseball after a coach attacks her just for being a girl.
FICTION STINE, R.	Lose, Team, Lose! by R. L. Stine. The biggest, toughest girl in school joins the football team and foils a sly fourth grader’s attempts to win the affections of the snobbiest girl in the class.
FICTION STONE, J.	Crane by Jeff Stone. In Chna in the mid-seventeenth century, twelve-year-old Hok, disguised as a boy for most of her life, must now assume her proper identity as a girl and try to save her brothers’ lives by entering the notorious Jinan City Fight Club.
FICTION TAVARES, M.	Mudball by Matt Tavares. During a rainy Minneapolis Millers baseball game in 1903, Little Andy Oyler has the chance to become a hero by hitting the shortest and muddiest home run in history.
FICTION WALLACE, R.	Dunk Under Pressure by Rich Wallace. Free throw specialist Cornell “Dunk” Duncan joins the YMCA summer basketball league all-star team, but after losing his confidence in an important game the seventh-grader makes some decisions about becoming an all-around player.
FICTION WALLACE, R.	Southpaw by Rich Wallace. After moving to New Jersey following his parents’ divorce, Jimmy Fleming tries out for the seventh-grade baseball team while also trying to cope with his new life and dealing with his overly-competitive father.
FICTION WILES, D.	The Aurora County All-Stars by Deborah Wiles. For most boys in a small Mississippi town, the biggest concern one hot summer is whether their annual July 4th baseball game will be cancelled due to their county’s anniversary pageant.
MYSTERY HALE, B.	This Gum for Hire: from the Tattered Casebook of Chet Gecko, Private Eye by Bruce Hale. To save his own skin, private eye Chet Gecko sets out to solve the mystery of Emerson Hicky Elementary School’s disappearing football players.