This just in, and just in time for tonight’s big basketball game — and baseball’s opening day — a new blog that explores sports themed books for kids and teens:  Get In The Game — Read!

Author Lori Calabrese has created this new forum to focus on all the wonderful books that energize and encourage kids to practice sports and reading. Here is an excerpt from Lori’s “About This Blog”:

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“If you think about it, sports and books just go together. The more

children practice, the better they become at sports. The more children

read, the better they become at reading. Both sports and books should

be inexpensive and accessible to everybody. They teach us about the

world around us, and overall, they’re just plain fun! So why not

combine the two? Avid sports fans can read a Sports Illustrated cover to cover, recite the

stats from the morning sports page, and read a program at a game. Avid

readers can learn about a sport, a specific athlete, or sports in other

countries. There are so many ways to incorporate sports and reading.

Make the most of all the resources that are available and waiting for

you: printed books, online books, magazines, etc…. Encourage

follow-up activities involving creative writing skills so your children

can expand on what they’ve absorbed and, at the same time, develop

their own creativity. As you help your kids appreciate the magic of

reading and the value of sports, you’ll find there’s a whole wide world

of fun and fundamentals!“

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We’ll be watching her blog to see when she includes one of our family’s favorite sports series — Barnstormers, by Phil Bildner and Loren Long.  The series has just been re-released as Sluggers, but the stories remain as enchanting as ever.  As always with me, it is the emotions behind the sport that hold the greatest appeal.  Long’s illustrations are so evocative of baseball’s golden age gone by…