Children's books and activities
Sports and the Olympics
Do you know any kids who love doing sports — from baseball to basketball to martial arts to soccer — and reading about their sports heroes? Or kids who are excited by the Olympics and learning all about the different events and the host countries? We've gathered up a great collection of books, activities, apps, and websites all about sports and the Olympics.
Try pairing fiction with nonfiction books and exploring different genres [6] (like poetry and biographies) and formats (like graphic novels and audio books). You'll be creating your own "text sets" — collections of texts focused on a specific topic, such as sports and the Olympics. Reading widely in this way helps children build background knowledge [7], vocabulary [8], and comprehension skills.
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Great Fiction & Nonfiction Books
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Print List
Babar's Celesteville Games
By: Laurent de Brunhoff
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Purchase on Amazon [23]
Baseball from A to Z
By: Michael Spradlin
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Comic illustrations effectively combine with a straightforward text to bring baseball terms to...
Purchase on Amazon [24]
Elympics
By: X.J. Kennedy
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Get ready for figure skating, diving, slalom racing, and more – elephant style! This cast of...
Purchase on Amazon [25]
Learning to Ski with Mr. Magee
By: Chris Van Dusen
Age Level: 3-6 years old
In this rhyming adventure, Mr. Magee and his dog Dee learn to ski. They didn't expect to run...
Purchase on Bookshop [26]
Purchase on Amazon [27]
Max and Marla
By: Alexandra Boiger
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Fiction
Max and Marla are best friends. And aspiring Olympians! With their eyes on the prize, they know...
Purchase on Amazon [28]
Olympics
By: B.G. Hennessy
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Purchase on Amazon [29]
Pelé: King of Soccer/El rey del fútbol
By: Monica Brown
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [30]
Purchase on Amazon [31]
She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story
By: Audrey Vernick
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Effa Manley, born when jazz was new and sports were segregated, was passionate about fairness...
Purchase on Bookshop [32]
Purchase on Amazon [33]
Sports! Sports! Sports! A Poetry Collection
By: Lee Bennett Hopkins
Age Level: 3-6 years old
Can a poem capture the excitement, exhilaration, or anguish of defeat when playing sports? The...
Purchase on Amazon [34]
The Mud Flat Olympics
By: James Stevenson
Age Level: 3-6 years old
The animals of Mud Flat decide to let the games begin in their unique version of Olympic...
Purchase on Amazon [35]
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Print List
A Big Day for Baseball
By: Mary Pope Osborne
Age Level: 6-9 years old
When Jack and Annie don the magic baseball hats given to them by Morgan, they find themselves...
Purchase on Bookshop [36]
Purchase on Amazon [37]
A Nation's Hope: The Story of Boxing Legend Joe Louis
By: Matt de la Peña
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Joe Louis' boxing match against Max Schmeling in 1938 reverberated in the U.S. and through...
Purchase on Amazon [40]
A Picture Book of Jackie Robinson
By: David Adler
Age Level: 6-9 years old
A portrait of a true American sports hero, Jackie Robinson, who was the first African American...
Purchase on Bookshop [41]
Purchase on Amazon [42]
A Picture Book of Jesse Owens
By: David Adler
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Amazon [43]
A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson
By: Michelle Green
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [44]
Purchase on Amazon [45]
America's Champion Swimmer: Gertrude Ederle
By: David Adler
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Trudy Ederle loved to swim, and she was determined to be the best. At seventeen Trudy won three...
Purchase on Bookshop [46]
Purchase on Amazon [47]
Ancient Greece and the Olympics (A Magic Treehouse Research Guide)
By: Mary Pope Osborne
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [48]
Purchase on Amazon [49]
Basketball Belles: How Two Teams & One Scrappy Player Put Women's Hoops on the Map
By: Sue Macy
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Women and girls haven't always played basketball. In fact, it was a struggle to play while...
Purchase on Amazon [50]
Bill Pickett: Rodeo-Ridin' Cowboy
By: Andrea Pinkney, Brian Pinkney
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The most celebrated black cowboy was Bill Pickett, a fearless rodeo star with a knack for taming...
Purchase on Bookshop [51]
Purchase on Amazon [52]
Black Jack: The Ballad of Jack Johnson
By: Charles Smith
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Arthur John Johnson became known as Black Jack, the world's first black heavyweight...
Purchase on Amazon [53]
Bright Path: Young Jim Thorpe
By: Don Brown
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Jim Thorpe's childhood was a mix of hard work in the outdoors and a succession of military-...
Purchase on Amazon [54]
Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team
By: Audrey Vernick
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [55]
Purchase on Amazon [56]
Capoeira: Game! Dance! Martial Art!
By: George Ancona
Age Level: 6-9 years old
A trip to Brazil inspired this look at a unique sport called "capoeira." The result is...
Purchase on Amazon [57]
Cross-Country Cat
By: Mary Calhoun
Age Level: 6-9 years old
What kind of cat would go sliding off on skis, and who'd believe it anyway? When the family...
Purchase on Bookshop [58]
Purchase on Amazon [59]
DK Eyewitness Books: Olympics
By: Chris Oxlade
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Readers will discover the pageantry of the original games; Pierre de Coubertin's revival of the...
Purchase on Amazon [60]
Farmer Will Allen and the Growing Table
By: Jacqueline Briggs Martin
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Martin shares the remarkable life story of former professional basketball player Will Allen,...
Purchase on Bookshop [61]
Purchase on Amazon [62]
Float Like a Butterfly
By: Ntozake Shange
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Visually stunning and informative, Ali’s early life, how it influenced him, as well as his many...
Purchase on Amazon [63]
Freeze Frame: A History of the Winter Olympics
By: Sue Macy
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The winter games began in France in 1924. This compelling examination of their start, the...
Purchase on Amazon [64]
G is for Gold Medal: An Olympics Alphabet
By: Doug Herzog
Age Level: 6-9 years old
This book showcases athletes and events that not only set sports records but also impacted...
Purchase on Bookshop [65]
Purchase on Amazon [66]
Home-Run King
By: Patricia McKissack
Age Level: 6-9 years old
There were always discoveries to be made in their grandmother's attic; and Gee always had a...
Purchase on Bookshop [67]
Purchase on Amazon [68]
Hour of the Olympics
By: Mary Pope Osborne
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
Purchase on Bookshop [69]
Purchase on Amazon [70]
How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball
By: David Shannon
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Amazon [71]
How to Solve a Problem: The Rise (and Falls) of a Rock-Climbing Champion
By: Ashima Shiraishi
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Ashima Shiraishi, one of the world's youngest and most skilled climbers in the world, draws on...
Purchase on Bookshop [72]
Purchase on Amazon [73]
How to Train with a T. Rex and Win 8 Gold Medals
By: Michael Phelps, Alan Abramson
Age Level: 6-9 years old
A champion at the 2008 Beijing Olympics explains the training schedule that allowed him to...
Purchase on Bookshop [74]
Purchase on Amazon [75]
Lucky Enough
By: Fred Bowen
Age Level: 6-9 years old
When Trey loses his lucky piece of sea glass, he’s convinced that his luck is gone, too. He goes...
Purchase on Bookshop [76]
Purchase on Amazon [77]
Major Taylor, Champion Cyclist
By: Lesa Cline-Ransome
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
A picture-book biography of Marshall Taylor, an African American who became a great bicycle...
Purchase on Bookshop [78]
Purchase on Amazon [79]
Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen
By: Marissa Moss
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [80]
Purchase on Amazon [81]
Mush! Sled Dogs of the Iditarod
By: Joe Funk
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Amazon [82]
Nadia: The Girl Who Couldn't Sit Still
By: Karlin Gray
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nadia Comaneci was a feisty and fearless little girl who went from climbing trees in the forests...
Purchase on Bookshop [83]
Purchase on Amazon [84]
Olympig!
By: Victoria Jamieson
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Boomer the Pig has been training hard for the Animal Olympics, so when he loses his first race,...
Purchase on Bookshop [85]
Purchase on Amazon [86]
She Loved Baseball: The Effa Manley Story
By: Audrey Vernick
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
Effa Manley, born when jazz was new and sports were segregated, was passionate about fairness...
Purchase on Bookshop [32]
Purchase on Amazon [33]
Silent Star: The Story of Deaf Major Leaguer William Hoy
By: Bill Wise
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Amazon [87]
Sixteen Years in Sixteen Seconds: The Sammy Lee Story
By: Paula Yoo
Age Level: 6-9 years old
The inspirational true story of Sammy Lee, a Korean American who overcame discrimination to...
Purchase on Amazon [88]
Skating Superstars
By: Scholastic Publishing
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Figure skating has become a popular Winter Olympics sport. Meet well-known figure skaters from...
Purchase on Amazon [89]
Stealing Home: Jackie Robinson Against the Odds
By: Robert Burleigh
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Lush, realistic illustrations combine with a simple text to suggest what it must have been like...
Purchase on Bookshop [90]
Purchase on Amazon [91]
Swifter, Higher, Stronger: A Photographic History of the Summer Olympics
By: Sue Macy
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Even though the ancient Greeks conceived the Olympics, it was a small Frenchman "with a...
Purchase on Amazon [92]
Tacky and the Winter Games
By: Helen Lester
Age Level: 6-9 years old
While Tacky's friends train for the winter games, he sleeps during sit-ups, pigs out on pizza...
Purchase on Bookshop [93]
Purchase on Amazon [94]
The Capital Catch (Ballpark Mysteries)
By: Dsavid A. Kelly
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Fiction
Mike and Kate are back to solve a new mystery. This one is in the Nation’s Capital, where the...
Purchase on Bookshop [95]
Purchase on Amazon [96]
The Funniest Man in Baseball: The True Story of Max
By: Audrey Vernick
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Even as a kid, Max had a good arm. He even pitched while he served in the Navy where he struck...
Purchase on Bookshop [97]
Purchase on Amazon [98]
The Kid from Diamond Street: The Extraordinary Story of Baseball Legend Edith Houghton
By: Audrey Vernick
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Not only did Edith Houghton play baseball in 1912, she played when she was only 10 years old!...
Purchase on Bookshop [100]
Purchase on Amazon [101]
The Summer Olympics
By: Bob Knotts
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
This straightforward introduction to the summer Olympics and their origins provides basic...
Purchase on Amazon [102]
The Wrigley Riddle
By: David Kelly
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [103]
Purchase on Amazon [104]
Touch the Sky: Alice Coachman, Olympic High Jumper
By: Anna Malaspina
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
In Alice Coachman's Georgia hometown, there was no track where an African-American girl could...
Purchase on Bookshop [105]
Purchase on Amazon [106]
Trudy's Big Swim: How Gertrude Ederle Swam the English Channel and Took the World by Storm
By: Sue Macy
Age Level: 6-9 years old
It was August 6, 1926; Gertrude Ederle was about to become the first woman to swim the English...
Purchase on Amazon [107]
Wilma Unlimited: How Wilma Rudolph Became the World's Fastest Woman
By: Kathleen Krull
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Wilma Rudolph not only overcame polio, she went on to become the first woman to win three...
Purchase on Bookshop [108]
Purchase on Amazon [109]
You Never Heard of Casey Stengel?!
By: Jonah Winter
Age Level: 6-9 years old
Nonfiction
He was known for his eccentricities and for being the winningest NY Yankees’ manager. Meet Casey...
Purchase on Amazon [110]
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Print List
12 Rounds to Glory: The Story of Muhammad Ali
By: Charles R. Smith, Jr.
Age Level: 9-12 years old
From the moment a fired-up teenager won 1960 Olympic gold to the day when a retired legend...
Purchase on Bookshop [111]
Purchase on Amazon [112]
Double Reverse
By: Fred Bowen
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Jesse isn’t as good a football player as his older brother but with a bit of encouragement from...
Purchase on Bookshop [113]
Purchase on Amazon [114]
Growing Up Pedro: Candlewick Biographies: How the Martinez Brothers Made It from the Dominican Republic All the Way to the Major Leagues
By: Matt Tavares
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
Before Pedro Martínez pitched the Red Sox to a World Series championship, before he was named to...
Purchase on Bookshop [115]
Purchase on Amazon [116]
I Got It!
By: David Wiesner
Age Level: 9-12 years old
A baseball game. A kid watching. An outfielder needed. It should be an easy out, but not really...
Purchase on Bookshop [117]
Purchase on Amazon [118]
Purchase Kindle version [119]
Mamie on the Mound: A Woman in Baseball's Negro Leagues
By: Leah Henderson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Nonfiction
Mamie "Peanut" Johnson had one dream: to play professional baseball, but she wasn't welcome in...
Purchase on Bookshop [120]
Purchase on Amazon [121]
Purchase Kindle version [122]
Roller Girl
By: Victoria Jamieson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Astrid realizes that her interests differ from those of her best friend but decides to pursue...
Purchase on Bookshop [123]
Purchase on Amazon [124]
We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball
By: Kadir Nelson, Nelson
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Purchase on Bookshop [125]
Purchase on Amazon [126]
White Water! National Geographic Kids
By: Brenna Maloney
Age Level: 9-12 years old
From hippo attacks on the Okavango River to Chitina headwaters in Alaska, this chapter book is...
Purchase on Amazon [127]
Wild River
By: P.J. Petersen
Age Level: 9-12 years old
Twelve-year-old Ryan goes kayaking and fishing on a California river with his older brother,...
Purchase on Bookshop [128]
Purchase on Amazon [129]
Purchase Kindle version [130]
Hands-on Activities
Build on what you're learning together through books with these family-friendly activities, experiments, and crafts.
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6 Active Games with a Sock Ball [131]
Active for Life -
8 Summer Olympics Sports Games [132]
Active for Life -
Activity Dice [133]
Active for Life -
Adopt-a-Nation Olympic Chart [134]
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Balance Dice [135]
KIDDO -
Baseball Scorecard [136]
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Baseball Scorecard for Kids [137]
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Baseball: How to Keep Score [138]
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Ceremonial Olympic Torch [139]
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Champion Gold Medals [140]
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Exploring Olympic Host Nations [141]
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Foosball Table [142]
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Kid-Friendly Learning During Baseball Games [143]
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Mini Golf Physics [144]
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Olive Leaf Crown [145]
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Origami Olympic Rings [146]
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Pitch and Hit Chart [147]
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Recipe for an Active Day [148]
Active for Life -
Summer Olympics Activities [149]
Active for Life -
Thrown for a Curve [150]
Summer Writing
Give kids a chance to flex their writing muscles all summer long. Try one of these prompts, selected from our writing contest archives and other literacy organizations.
Great Websites for Kids
Dive deeper into topics of interest with these media-rich and interactive sites.
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Active for Life [153]
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Ancient Greek Olympics [154]
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Baseball Poems and Songs [155]
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Club Major League Baseball [156]
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Fastball Reaction Time [157]
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GeoGames: Winter Sports [158]
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Go for the Gold [159]
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It's Greek to Me [160]
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KIDDO: Improve Your Move [161]
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Let's Move Outside [162]
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Little Lunkers: Take Me Fishing [163]
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Nature Find: Find Parks, Trails, and Other Nature Sites Near You [164]
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NBA Hoop Troop [165]
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Rio 2016 Summer Olympics (Official Website) [166]
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Science of Baseball [167]
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Skateboard Science [168]
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Sports Illustrated for Kids [169]
Great Podcasts for Kids
Listen and learn with these podcasts especially for kids. These podcasts are free and easy to listen to from any device via Apple Podcasts [170], Google Podcasts [171], or Stitcher [172] — or from Listen Notes [173], a podcast search engine.
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On the Shoulders of Giants [174]
Code Switch -
Skateboards: When Roller Skates Met Surfboards [175]
Brains On: Forever Ago
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The Physics of Basketball [176]
Tumble Science Podcast
Educational Apps
Educational apps recommended by Common Sense Media and other trusted reviewers.
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ABC Play [177]
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Chop Chop Tennis [178]
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Crazy Basketball [179]
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FIFA Soccer [180]
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Kurt Warner's Football 101 [181]
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More Themed Resources
Growing Readers Tip Sheets
Simple activities for parents and kids to do together to build reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. Read online or print the PDF.
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Measure Up! [182]
Download PDF: English [183] | Spanish [184]
Our Summer Blog
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Trailblazer Summer [188]
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Score Big with Books [189]
Washington DC for Kids
Places
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East Potomac Park [192]