Sports ~ Realistic Fiction
Grades 6 - 8

Clippinger, Carol	Open Court Thirteen-year-old Holloway "Hall" Braxton eats, sleeps and lives tennis and also manages to have friends as well. Her parents have sacrificed much to nurture her talent but have also managed not to put too much pressure on her to win. That has come from within herself - until now. She is beginning to doubt herself in the wake of her best tennis friend's meltdown and institutionalization. She's feeling pressure to consider attending a tennis academy far away from her Colorado Springs home so that she can take her tennis to the next level. And she has a crush on a boy. I liked this book in spite of a few glaring typos and relative lack of game or tournament action. It focused instead on the grueling hours of practice that true champions must commit to in order to be at the top of their game.
Coy, John	Box Out Sophomore Liam Bergstrom gets brought up from jv to play varsity. Coach wants his height at rebounding. He's thrilled, works hard, listens to everything the coach says, but it thrown when coach leads the team in prayer before the start of each half and expects participation in an extracurricular prayer meeting.Good basketball action combined with an interesting dilemma.
Deuker, Carl	High Heat Deuker's books are for readers who like sports and who also like to think. I have read all his other books (Night Hoops, Painting the Black, On the Devil's Court and Heart of a Champion) and recommend them and this one as well. Shane Hunter is a well-regarded closing pitcher in his exclusive high school. His father gets arrested at one of his baseball games for laundering money and Shane's privileged world is turned upside down.
Feinstein, John	Cover-Up: Mystery at the Super Bowl Steven Thomas and Susan Carol Anderson are about to be sent to cover the Super Bowl as co-hosts of a Kids' Sports show when Stevie learns that he has been replaced by a boy band pop idol. His mentor and friend Bob Kellerher arranges for him to work for The Washington Herald during Super Bowl week. Stevie is having a fine time snagging interesting interviews but battles jealousy about Susan Carol's handsome partner. When Susan Carol receives a tip that five players on the offensive line of one of the teams tested positive for steroid use, the story is huge. As Steven and Susan Carol try to find a way to break the story without dragging their most reliable source into the spotlight, they find themselves in trouble with a capital T.
Feinstein, John	Last Shot: A Final Four Mystery
Fitzgerald, Dawn	Soccer Chick Rules Good soccer, middle school drama and a political cause are the plot points of this interesting sports novel for girl athletes looking for a good read. Thirteen-year-old Tess' life revolves around sports. The only reason why she puts up with school is to play a sport every season. Now the school budget is about to be defeated, which means all sports will be eliminated unless it passes.
Green, Tim	Football Hero
Green, Tim	Football Genius This fast-paced novel has plenty of action on and off the football field to keep the reader turning pages. Sixth grader Troy is a reasonably good QB who never gets a chance to play because his coach always plays his own son, who is a mediocre player and a bully. Troy also has the ability to predict what each team will do during a game. It doesn't matter whether it is a pro, college or peewee league ball. Troy just sees the patterns and nearly unerring predicts the play. When his single mother gets a job as a PR person for his beloved Atlanta Falcons football team, Troy sees a chance to help the team win only to be hauled off the field by security but not before the team's star linebacker, Seth Halloway notices.
Heldring, Thatcher	Toby Wheeler Eighth-Grade Benchwarmer Toby Wheeler revels in his gym rat status and readily acknowledges JJ, his best friend's basketball star status. But when a new coach comes to his middle school and suggests that Toby try out for the team, he does and is puzzled by JJ's newly acquired distance. He is somewhat distracted by new girl Megan, and the two begin a friendship based on basketball. Coach is strict and demanding and Toby is a benchwarmer. His life is also complicated by the fact that Megan is Coach's daughter and Coach is very overprotective. This warmhearted, humorous book has interesting characters and good sports, even if the ending is somewhat predictable.
King, Donna	Kickoff Tyra Fraser finds herself moving clear across the Atlantic Ocean from Florida to England when her father is transferred to an Army base on the moors. She is not too happy about leaving her soccer team and her friends. On top of that, her sister, who may have autism, is acting out and her class' queen bee, Alicia, has taken an instant dislike to Tyra. Soccer becomes Tyra's solace. Unfortunately, Alicia is also on the soccer team and none too happy about the addition of Tyra. A fun read, with decent soccer descriptions, if a bit trite and formulaic.
Koertge, Ron	Shakespeare Bats Cleanup Fourteen-year-old Kevin is sidelined from his position of MVP first-baseman with Mono. He is confined to bed and out of sheer boredom reads a book of poetry that his writer-father had in his study. He begins his own poetry journal which in turn, tells us a lot about Kevin, who is more than a dumb jock. Koertge is good at writing blank verse novels as well as novels. I really liked his blank verse, Brimstone Journals and traditional novel, Stoner and Spaz.
Lupica, Mike	Heat I never did get to read Travel Team, Lupica's first novel for young adults. I used to read Lupica's sports columns when I was a teenager. Travel Team got good reviews in my journals, but more importantly, was recommended to me by several students and rarely spends any time on the shelf. Where Travel Team dealt with basket ball and a boy's love of the sport, Heat tells the story of twelve-year-old Michael Arroyo, a boy with immense talent, an eighty-mile-an-hour fast ball and a seccret. As his Bronx team comes close to winning a spot in the playoffs preceding the Little League World series in Williamsport, Michael's talent comes under the scrutiny of a sour grapes coach from Westchester and in this post-Danny Almonte world, demands that the Little League commissioner investigate the legitimacy of his birth certificate. His father registered him with the only documentation that come over on the boat from Cuba, his baptismal certificate. Now Little League rules demand a birth certificate and the commissioners are asking for his dad to produce it. Ther is another problem in addition to battling the bureaucracy of the Cuban government, and that is that Danny's father died three months earlier and Danny and his brother Carlos are living in fear that "Official People" will find out and separate the two.
Lupica, Mike	Travel Team When twelve-year-old Danny Walker doesn't make the seventh grade travel basketball team because he is too short, he is crushed. He eats, sleeps and dreams basketball and his height never got in the way before. He knows that Mr. Ross, basketball commissioner and all around big man about town wants this year's seventh grade travel team to be BIG. His son is in seventh grade and has been Danny's teammate and friend and Mr. Ross wants his son's team to win the national championship again. He knows that Mr. Ross was on the same seventh grade basketball team that won the national basketball championship many years earlier with Danny's dad, Richie, who went on to play college ball and turned pro before a horrible car accident ended his career. He doesn't know why Mr. Ross would cut him with his talent and neither does his son, Ty. When Danny forms his own travel team, things really heat up around Middletown. There is plenty of basketball action and interesting depictions of parent coaches and competition in this quick, fun, if predictable and slightly melodramatic read.
Lupica, Mike	Summer Ball Danny's back in this satisfying sequel to Travel Team. Summer Ball can be read as a stand alone, but is much more satisfying if you have read Travel Team. It's the summer before high school and Danny, Will and Ty are heading to Maine to attend an elite basketball camp. He's bummed because he still hasn't had his growth spurt and Tess seems to be constantly hanging out with "Mr. Perfect while he continues to be tongue-tied around her. The two have a fight just before he leaves for camp. Once at camp, he finds that through a computer glitch, he didn't receive a bunk assignment and the only available bunks are with the younger campers. To add insult to injury, he is placed on the same team as Rasheed, a player he went up against in the Travel Team Championships. There's plenty of basketball action in this book as well as characters who are complex and realistic.
Lupica, Mike	Miracle on 49th Street Very readable, if unbelievable book about a girl who finds out she's the daughter of a professional basketball star from her dying mother and decides to let the guy know he has a daughter.
Ritter, John H.	Under the Baseball Moon Andy Ramos lives in Ocean Beach, San Diego with parents he loves and respects. He is a skateboarder and musician and loves to board around town riffing on his trumpet, a beat up old instrument his beloved late grandfather won in a card game. Both his parents are musicians but never made it big like his grandpa did. Andy wants very badly to make it big and is on the verge of doing so. What is a book about a musician doing on the Sports Books Page? Glory Martinez moves back to OB with her mom into the recently vacated apartment over OB Juan's restaurant and Gloria is a wicked good softball player who has hopes of making an olympic team and scoring a softball scholarship. This book is a different kind of sports story and one that girls will enjoy as much as boys. I look forward to reading Ritter's earlier books.
Telander, Rick	String Music Robby is an eleven-year-old basketball nut. He loves basketball and idolizes Jasper Jasmine, however he can't play it no matter how much he practices. He gets disrespected by his teammates, his coach and things aren't too good at home either. When Robby runs away and hitches a ride to the stadium where Jasper plays, his life changes.
Testa, Marie	Becoming Joe DiMaggio Papa Angelo has a new grandson in 1936 and he is named Joseph Paul in honor of the Yankees new center fielder, Joe DiMaggio. This slim novel is told as a series of verse. It is a quick read, at times touching, but not one that I would tell you that you MUST read.
Zinnen, LInda	Holding at Third Thirteen-year-old Matt Bainter has a lot on his plate. He is the middle child of a large family, a baseball prodigy and his much-adored nineteen-year-old brother may be dying of cancer. For the last year, Matt has been his brother Tom's rock with his can-do attitude. Now Tom's only hope is an experimental stem cell treatment at a university hospital a few towns away. Matt agrees to leave his school and his baseball team and start over; for Tom, so that he can be there for Tom to get him through the next hurdle. His new school is thrilled to have him on the team. Everyone thinks Matt can handle the pressure. Can he?