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 (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, vocabulary, and comprehension skills.

Sports and the Olympics

Great Fiction & Nonfiction Books

Age Level: 3-6 years old

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Babar's Celesteville Games

By: Laurent de Brunhoff

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Babar and his family are thrilled that Celesteville is hosting the Games! This is their chance to...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Olympics

By: B.G. Hennessy

Age Level: 3-6 years old

All over the world, people are getting ready for the Olympics. Runners, swimmers, skiers, and...

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Pelé: King of Soccer/El rey del fútbol

By: Monica Brown

Age Level: 3-6 years old

Did you know that as a boy, Pelé played soccer in bare feet with a grapefruit instead of a soccer...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Age Level: 6-9 years old

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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...

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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...

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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...

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A Picture Book of Jesse Owens

By: David Adler

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Jesse Owens was a breakthrough athlete — an African American who captured the world stage (and four...

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A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson

By: Michelle Green

Age Level: 6-9 years old

At just over 5 feet tall, no one thought Mamie Johnson, also known as "Peanut" because of her size...

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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...

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Ancient Greece and the Olympics (A Magic Treehouse Research Guide)

By: Mary Pope Osborne

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Where and how the Olympics began is explored in this factual companion to Hour of the Olympics...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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-...

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Brothers at Bat: The True Story of an Amazing All-Brother Baseball Team

By: Audrey Vernick

Age Level: 6-9 years old

"[B]ack in the 1920s and '30s," twelve of sixteen Acerra children played baseball (the girls back...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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,...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Hour of the Olympics

By: Mary Pope Osborne

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Fiction

Annie and Jack travel back in time to the first Olympic games to retrieve a lost story. There they...

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How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball

By: David Shannon

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Baseball and a boy named Georgie Radbourn are the reason that America's perpetual winter came to an...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Mighty Jackie: The Strike-Out Queen

By: Marissa Moss

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Jackie loved to pitch baseball. Her long practices paid off when at 17-years old she pitched for...

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Mush! Sled Dogs of the Iditarod

By: Joe Funk

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Iditarod racers often run in families of humans and the dogs that run. The grueling, exciting race...

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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...

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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,...

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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...

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Silent Star: The Story of Deaf Major Leaguer William Hoy

By: Bill Wise

Age Level: 6-9 years old

William Hoy wasn't born deaf but lost it as a boy growing up in rural Ohio. In spite of his hearing...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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!...

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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...

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The Wrigley Riddle

By: David Kelly

Age Level: 6-9 years old

Go inside Wrigley Field where the Chicago Cubs play baseball with Mike and Katie as they solve the...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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Age Level: 9-12 years old

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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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...

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We Are the Ship: The Story of the Negro League Baseball

By: Kadir Nelson, Nelson

Age Level: 9-12 years old

An introduction by baseball great Hank Aaron opens this riveting look at the history of the Negro...

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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...

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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,...

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