Football: Facts, Stats, Stars, and Stuff

Children's Literature - Tiffany Erickson

Football fans, or those wanting to learn more about football, will have plenty of information to sift through in this volume. This highly browsable, but not easily readable, book will appeal mostly to readers interested in quick stats and facts. The book is broken down into "quarters," like a football game, and each quarter is devoted to different parts of the game. Furthermore, each double-page spread is its own chapter, making the contents page look like a maze of chapter headings. The information given is solid, with profiles of each team and plenty of recognition given to football greats, not just the stars of today. However, this volume only gives information up to the 2008-2009 season, meaning that the New Orleans Saints are still listed as a team that has never appeared in the Super Bowl, when now they have actually won a title. The writing is very conversational and informal, which will appeal to reluctant readers and trivia is given a breakneck pace, so any reader will learn five new facts on each page. Busy libraries with popular football collections will want to spend the extra money on the library edition, but smaller libraries would do just as well by buying the paperback and replacing it with newer editions frequently. Reviewer: Tiffany Erickson