April 1, 2016
Gr 4-6-Amateur sports buffs will learn something new from this series. The question-and-answer format provides trivia tidbits that get harder from one chapter to the next. The facts are fun and many will be unknown to the intended audience, so it's easy to imagine students committing them to memory to wow friends and family. Some inaccuracies are small (Football calls Green Bay Packers player John Kuhn a running back-he's really a fullback). Larger issues arise in the trivia quizzes at the end of each title. Many of the quiz questions are answered by previous chapters, but in each book, at least one trivia question is new information, like in the case of Basketball with an uncovered question about LeBron James's high school sports career. Students conditioned to answer questions about what they read will not be pleased. VERDICT Sadly not up to par.
Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
July 1, 2016
Trivia questions, divided into four chapters by difficulty, appear directly above answers. The format makes "cheating" hard to avoid: "In which sport did Lindsey Vonn win a gold medal in 2010?" is asked on the facing page to Vonn's downhill skiing picture. Sports fans are better off quizzing one another. A final quiz is provided. Reading list. Glos., ind.
(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)