Amazing Basketball

Gr 3–5—Each book begins with a brief history of its featured competition or sport before launching into a random selection of feats. For example, Olympic highlights the "Oldest Olympic Swimming Medalists" (Dara Torres and William Robinson) as well as "Most Summer Olympic Medals" (Michael Phelps). Numerous competitors are given sufficient attention; report writers will appreciate this set over Raintree's all-too-brief "Fantastic Sports Facts." Large, attractive, captioned, color and black-and-white photographs and reproductions are surrounded by sidebars of trivia on each spread. Even though the nature of the set's content will quickly date it (records are broken all the time), this series could be used to prompt conversation and/or further research. Select individual titles for sports that need representation in a collection.