Sports Pages

by Arnold Adoff

Poems about the experiences and feelings of young athletes involved in various sports.

Genres: Childrens, Poetry, Sports

80 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Emily]

Sports Pages is a book many teachers and librarians may be tempted to simply hand any male child to interest him in poetry. The tactic may work; it may not. This book by Arnold Adoff is less about the glory of sport and more about athletic struggles, disappointments and the dark side of athletics. While each poem could be read individually, some speakers show up in multiple poems throughout the book. For example, one speaker is a boy who injures his knee. Poems with his voice are scattered throughout the book – first the game where he gets hurt, then at the doctor’s office, the weight room retraining his knee and finally, at a game where he is forced to sit on the sidelines and watch his teammates play without him. Adoff creates a sense of action and tension in his language that echo the action and tension of sports. Illustrations in this collection are blocky pencil sketches by Steve Kuzma. The starkness of the illustrations echo the disappointment often evident in the voice of the speaker. While a variety of sports are covered in this book, most poems are about football and basketball and only a very few have female voices.

[Clara Elffers]

sat down with intentions to read 1 or 2 poems before bed and was delighted to find that i couldn’t put it down— (mostly because of the narrative thread and beautiful illustrations full of motion!)

reading the workout plans/ lists of stretches as poetry was ROUGH. i LOVED a few particular poems but disliked about an equal amount… if i didn’t like this so much as a cohesive collection, the individual poems that fell short would probably drop this half a star.

[Cortney Perkins]

This is a great read of poems about sports. It is inspiring and about following your dreams. It shares fears, determination, accomplishments, goals, rewards and all other feelings that we encounter when we play sports. It would be a wonderful book to have in a classroom library. It is short and an easy read.