A fun collection about sports. Children will appreciate the easy to read poems. An enjoyable part of the poems is they do not all showcase the best athletes. Some of the poems have silly sport mistakes and losing teams. A great mix of sports and funny poems make this a great collection of poems.

Good Sports is a good book about sports. It is also a book of poetry. I think this book can be used in the classroom to introduce all the different sports and to also introduce poems to children. This book is about a boy who talks about which sports he does and does not like. I think it was a good book. ( )

genre: realistic fiction
This book is all about sports. It plays with rhyming throughout the book and it has a fun way of describing many different sports in story form. It tells the story of each different sport by also creating a vivid picture of what that sport would look like. It has interesting illustrations to go with the quirky, rhyming style of the book.
Age group: 3-5th grade

In my opinion, this is a good book. The first reason that I liked this book was because I thought it would be very relatable for readers. The book is comprised of different poems about various sports. I think that the book is relatable because readers can find a poem about a sport they enjoy and immediately they have a connection to the book. If readers do not have connection to a specific sport then maybe they can read the book and gain a connection to a sport. Readers could also use this book to gain information about sports, or even be exposed to a new sport. There is different terminology used in the book that readers can learn about and gain insight about a sport. For example, some of the terms used are “goalkeeper, vault, flounder, touchdown, and dunk.” Readers are able to use this book of poems to gain knowledge about familiar and unfamiliar sports. Another thing I liked about the book was that I found the language to be quite expressive, “I chop chop chop without a stop, I move with great agility.” Readers are able to see the expression of karate through the language that is used. Using words like chop helps the reader to be put in the mindset of karate, because one of the aspects of karate is to chop objects, among other activities. Another thing that I liked about the book were the illustrations that were used. The illustrations were watercolor paintings, and really quite beautiful. They were able to display the actions of the sports in ways that the text could not. Another thing that was interesting about the illustrations is that they would continue across the pages of the book. For example, the trail that the roller-skaters used went across the page, and this made the book very interesting. Readers were able to be engaged and excited by the illustrations. Having such interesting pictures for young readers to look at would really help them engage and interact with the text. A last thing that I liked about the book was the characters were relatable and believable. There were times when the characters were extremely excited about their sports, and I’m sure this is something most athletes can relate to. But, there were also times when their sports upset them, “baseball is fun, but it gives me the blues, to score ninety-four, and still manage to lose.” I’m sure athletes can relate to playing a hard game and not having the scoreboard represent the outcome they wanted. Having the characters be relatable helps readers to see themselves in the story, and be further engaged in the story. Also, having characters feel these kinds of emotions also helps the characters to be believable. I think the overall message of the story is to find an activity and be passionate about it. In each poem the characters love what they are doing. Even though they will not win every game they still have a passion to continue playing the sport. ( )

Library Exploration Assignment