Here are 100 books that Let Me Play fans have personally recommended if you like
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I was a very active kid – the kind of kid who was constantly told to sit still and be quiet. Growing up in the 1960s, I had few opportunities to engage in athletics, other than neighborhood games of tag and kick-the-can. But when I got to high school, our school district had just begun offering competitive sports for girls. Finally, my energy and athletic ability were appreciated (at least by my coaches and teammates). So I guess it was inevitable that when I began writing books for young readers, I would start with a book about a girl who loves sports.
Although the main character in this warm and funny book is a boy, I include it in my list of favorite books about girls who love sports because the best athlete in this story of a middle-school cross country team is a girl. She’s the team member all the other kids depend on. The team member who pushes Joseph Friedman – a boy with attention challenges, innumerable phobias, and no athletic “gifts” – to keep trying. She just won’t let Joseph give up. I love the relationships between the teammates in this book. And I love the way Asher shows that in running – as in life – winning doesn’t always mean coming in first. It means trying to do just a little bit better each time you step onto the track.
"This is a splendid novel that I read in one sitting. . . . You will cheer when this kid embraces 'Do your best' and shows it to be a ringing call to nothing less than Triumph." -Gary D. Schmidt, Printz Honor winner and two-time Newbery Honor winner "Diana Harmon Asher tells an entertaining story about a boy picking his way through the potholes and pitfalls of puberty, with a little help from his friends." -Richard Peck, Newbery Medal winner "Just read it! Diana Harmon Asher has written a witty, observant, and sensitive…
I was a very active kid – the kind of kid who was constantly told to sit still and be quiet. Growing up in the 1960s, I had few opportunities to engage in athletics, other than neighborhood games of tag and kick-the-can. But when I got to high school, our school district had just begun offering competitive sports for girls. Finally, my energy and athletic ability were appreciated (at least by my coaches and teammates). So I guess it was inevitable that when I began writing books for young readers, I would start with a book about a girl who loves sports.
You’d have a hard time finding a funnier, more captivating first-person narrator than D.J. Swank. Growing up on her family’s farm, hoisting hay bales, and playing pick-up football with her brothers, it’s no wonder D.J. has the strength, ability, and desire to play on her high school’s football team. The two things I love most about this book are D.J.’s sheer joy in physical movement and Murdock’s depiction of how the hard work required to master sports skills can build self-confidence and a sense of achievement in young people. The characters are a bit older than those in most middle-grade books, but with nothing more controversial than the drinking of a beer, this is a book kids in the upper range of middle grade will love.
When you don’t talk, there’s a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. Harsh words indeed, from Brian Nelson of all people. But, D. J. can’t help admitting, maybe he’s right.
When you don’t talk, there’s a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said. Stuff like why her best friend, Amber, isn’t so friendly anymore. Or why her little brother, Curtis, never opens his mouth. Why her mom has two jobs and a big secret. Why her college-football-star brothers won’t even call home. Why her dad would go ballistic if she tried out for the high…
I was a very active kid – the kind of kid who was constantly told to sit still and be quiet. Growing up in the 1960s, I had few opportunities to engage in athletics, other than neighborhood games of tag and kick-the-can. But when I got to high school, our school district had just begun offering competitive sports for girls. Finally, my energy and athletic ability were appreciated (at least by my coaches and teammates). So I guess it was inevitable that when I began writing books for young readers, I would start with a book about a girl who loves sports.
Samira is a Rohingya girl whose family fled anti-Muslim violence in Myanmar and now lives near a refugee camp in a Bangladesh beach town. This doesn’t sound like the set-up for a “sports” book, yet like all the best sports books, this beautiful novel-in-verse is about so much more than simply winning or losing a game. I love the way Guidroz shows the strong bonds that form within a team – in this case, a group of girls who help one another learn to swim and surf, defying cultural standards that bar girls from these activities. I also love how participating in this sport gives Samira a way to grow as an individual and claim her own identity: “Before I was Samira,” she says. “Now, I am Samira the Surfer.”
A middle grade novel in verse about Samira, an eleven-year-old Rohingya refugee living in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, who finds strength and sisterhood in a local surf club for girls.
Samira thinks of her life as before and after: before the burning and violence in her village in Burma, when she and her best friend would play in the fields, and after, when her family was forced to flee. There's before the uncertain journey to Bangladesh by river, and after, when the river swallowed her nana and nani whole. And now, months after rebuilding a life in Bangladesh with her mama,…
I was a very active kid – the kind of kid who was constantly told to sit still and be quiet. Growing up in the 1960s, I had few opportunities to engage in athletics, other than neighborhood games of tag and kick-the-can. But when I got to high school, our school district had just begun offering competitive sports for girls. Finally, my energy and athletic ability were appreciated (at least by my coaches and teammates). So I guess it was inevitable that when I began writing books for young readers, I would start with a book about a girl who loves sports.
This is one of my absolute favorite books. It’s beautifully written, telling a compelling story about Molly Williams, who shared a love of baseball and a deep connection with her father through the long hours they spent talking while he taught her to pitch a knuckleball. When he dies in a car accident, Molly’s world falls apart. Her mother descends into depression, and communication between them stops. Molly slowly puts her life back together when she earns a place on a boys’ baseball team and builds friendships with her teammates. The power of this book lies in its central metaphor: the need for communication. Between pitcher and catcher, between base coach and runner, between parent and child, between friends.
For an eighth grader, Molly Williams has more than her fair share of problems. Her father has just died in a car accident, and her mother has become a withdrawn, quiet version of herself.
Molly doesn’t want to be seen as “Miss Difficulty Overcome”; she wants to make herself known to the kids at school for something other than her father’s death. So she decides to join the baseball team. The boys’ baseball team. Her father taught her how to throw a knuckleball, and Molly hopes it’s enough to impress her coaches as well as her new teammates.
As a writer, I’ve found that learning about other writers and their processes helps me. Over the years, I’ve devoured the memoirs and letters of writers like Madeleine L’Engle, Audre Lorde, and Zora Neal Hurston. In 2006, when I started a writing program for young people in my city, I brought these writers’ words to use as writing prompts. When I researched my book, Mightier Than the Sword, I read dozens of anthologies to find people who used writing to make a difference in their fields—science, art, politics, music, and sports. I will always be grateful for those anthologies—because they broadened my knowledge and introduced me to so many interesting people.
Over the years, I’ve met many young people who are more interested in sports than social studies. I was so excited to find this book—because it helps sports-minded kids see the tremendous contribution young women have made to both sports and social change. You’ll read about how these women overcame barriers, competed in challenging circumstances, and still broke records. You will also learn how they are still making a difference in the world. These multidimensional heroes help us want to be more like them!
Do you play sports? Maybe you dream about scoring a goal on the soccer field or hitting a home run in baseball. Perhaps you're thinking about trying a new sport, but you're still not sure.
In We Got Game you'll meet thirty-five female athletes who played hard, broke records, and inspired girls around the world. Some of these athletes have retired. Others are still competing. But they have one thing in common: they all got game! You'll read about the first woman horse jockey to compete in the Kentucky Derby, the number one tennis player in the world, a surfer…
As I write in Fight Songs, my name has nothing to do with it: It refers to a geography an ocean away, and predates any notion of the American South (or of America, for that matter). I have spent most of my life in the South, though, loving football, basketball, and other sports that didn’t always love me back. I became curious about why they’ve come to play such an outsized role in our culture. Why did my home state come to a standstill for a basketball tournament? Why does my wife’s home state shut down for a football game? Writing Fight Songs was one way of exploring those questions. Reading these books was another.
I just don’t get why some males are so threatened by women who love sports. I mean, I get it, but I don’t get it. I thought meeting and marrying a fellow football fan was hitting the jackpot: What could be better than a spouse who wants to spend our anniversaries road-tripping to away games?
This book is a harrowing and infuriating journey through the insecurities of the American male, which you should never underestimate. Far too many of my fellow sports fans need to get their hearts right.
“Sidelined is the feminist sports book we've all been waiting for.” —Jessica Valenti
Shrill meets Brotopia in this personal and researched look at women's rights and issues through the lens of sports, from an award-winning sports journalist and women's advocate
In a society that is digging deep into the misogyny underlying our traditions and media, the world of sports is especially fertile ground. From casual sexism, like condescending coverage of women’s pro sports, to more serious issues, like athletes who abuse their partners and face only minimal consequences, this area of our culture is home to a vast swath of…
I was born in England but have also lived in Germany and Switzerland. I’m not – and never have been – an elite sportsperson, but I'm fascinated by the sporting world and in particular, how young people who are into sports cope with the pressures of growing up and dealing with the successes and failures of sports. I love playing sports and watching it, in particular the Olympics and Paralympics, because of the drama, the tension, the soaring highs of winning, and the miserable lows of losing. The books that I've chosen hooked me in and kept me turning their pages because they’re gripping stories with irresistible (sporty) characters in inspiring settings.
This is a book I found out about when I was researching and writing my own book. It follows the story of three British cyclists, Zoe, Kate, and Jack, as they train for Olympic glory. Cleave writes about the glorious excitement of the sport, the brutal pain of training, and the hard choices these athletes have to make and his characters are unforgettable.
Goldhelped me realise that you can write a book that weaves sport into a story about love, friendship, loyalty, and grief. Goldwas a great inspiration to me!
The extraordinary third novel from Chris Cleave, author of the internationally bestselling, Costa-shortlisted THE OTHER HAND.
Kate and Zoe are friends but also ardent rivals - athletes at the top of their game, fighting to compete in the world's greatest sporting contest. Each scarred by tragedy, and each with a great deal to lose, they must choose between family and glory and ask themselves: what will I sacrifice?
GOLD captures the extraordinary effort and dedication that go into the pursuit of victory. But this life-affirming novel is about more than sport. It is about human endurance, motherhood and love, and…
I adore books about sporty badass girls. Yet, when I first began to write Dangerous Play, there were few young-adult novels featuring fierce sporty girls. Of those, there were fewer which portrayed the powerful friendships that can emerge on girls’ sports teams. I want to read and write about girls who are defined by more than their love interests, who are dogged in the pursuit of their goals. In a world that so often judges girls by how their bodies look, sports offers an arena in which girls can view and value their bodies in an alternative way. And who doesn’t love to cheer for someone who beats the odds?
I inhaled Break the Fall, set in the world of elite gymnastics. After an injury, Audrey is not only ready to return to gymnastics but does the impossible thing of qualifying for the Olympics. Finally, she’s on the cusp of achieving all that she’s dreamed of and trained for all these years. Everything unravels, however, when their coach is accused of sexual assault. Iacopelli does a gorgeous job capturing all of the highs and lows of this story, as well as the intensity of elite athletics. While we don’t typically think of gymnastics as a team sport, I was especially appreciative of the way Iacopelli showed the girls standing up for each other as a team, which is rare in YA girls’ sports books.
A fiercely told survivorship novel about one girl's determination to push her body to win gold at the Olympics, and the power of uniting as women to speak out.
The only thing seventeen-year-old Audrey Lee dreams about is swinging her way to Olympic glory. Nothing is going to stop her, not even the agony in her back. Every spasm and ache will be worth it once she has that gold medal around her neck.
But none of her training prepares her for her coach being led away in handcuffs, accused by a fellow gymnast of the unthinkable. No one knows…
As a boy, I wanted to play baseball professionally. But, alas, talent was not within me, and I became one of the few people in the world who chose physics as a career because something else was too hard. Part of my career as a scientist is learning new things; another part is teaching and, hopefully, imbuing students with a love of science. The sports science books here all taught me a great deal, and I have recommended them to several of my students. Sports can be an excellent vehicle for learning some science, and such learning about a sport one loves can make watching the sport even more fun.
As a quinquagenarian, I needed this book! Our bodies change so much as we age, and those changes obviously affect how well we perform athletically. Nutrition science has made great strides over the past several decades.
Antonucci’s book incorporates the latest that nutrition science has to offer so that those of us who are not professional athletes can strategically fuel ourselves, avoid dehydration, and eat healthier. I work out better, and I recover faster using Antonucci’s book. I was not looking for a slew of biochemistry when I picked up her book. I could get right to the scientific results and implement them into my own life.
It's an undisputed fact that the body's physiological needs change as you age. But that doesn't mean you can't continue to compete and perform at your best. In High-Performance Nutrition for Masters Athletes, you'll find practical advice for fueling your active lifestyle-now and for decades to come.
The key to effectively adapting your nutrition plans is first understanding how needs change over time and how expected results shift through the decades. Explore the science behind proper fueling for training and competition with the current guidelines for carbohydrate, protein, and fat intake plus advice on proper hydration, avoiding the dangers of…
My
novels explore women whose contributions to culture have been relegated to the
footnotes of mainstream history books, and in few areas have women been more
overlooked than in sports. Because of the achievements of today’s female
athletes, ranging from the many athletic opportunities available to our young
daughters to the professional success of women like Serena Williams, it’s easy
to think that progress for women’s sports has come a long way—and in many ways, it has, thanks to legislative protections like Title IX—but these achievements reflect
over a century’s worth of sacrifice by many unheralded women athletes. Here are
five books that highlight this journey.
In this novel that feels ripped straight from the headlines, the life of a young woman training as an elite gymnast is upended when her best friend confides that their doctor has assaulted her. Not only is this story timely, but it provides a glimpse into the mind-boggling discipline and talent it takes to be an Olympic gymnast.
"Propulsive, transfixing, and disturbing. I could not set the book down. Harrowing and fearlessly honest, The Happiest Girl in the World is a haunting read because it couldn't have done justice to its subjects - fictional and real - any other way." -Popsugar
One of Good Morning America's Best Books of April!
From the acclaimed author of Mercy House comes a gripping new novel about a young woman's dreams of Olympic gymnastic gold-and what it takes to reach the top
For Sera Wheeler, the Olympics is the reason for everything. It's why she trains thirty hours a week, starves herself…
