Saturday, February 13, 2010

The Greatest Moments in Sports by Len Berman


Last night was the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics. I thought it was a beautiful show. The First Nations of Canada part was incredible. I loved the kid that flew through the pictures on the changing landscape of our neighbor to the north. NBC finally got it right by showing the countries of the World. They even showed us the countries that marched while we were at the commercials.

I am not a big sports guy. I enjoy listening and watching baseball and it is fun to watch soccer at the local fish and chips joint. So, when I received The Greatest Moments in Sports by Len Berman I said to myself “Boy, are you out of your league!” As I started the introduction I soon realized this is a great book for my class. The author Len Berman writes about how historians can’t even agree on who invented baseball, so how is he going to be able to say what are the best sports moments. It is this line that hooked the teacher (me) “You may or may not agree with my choices, but for each moment, I’ll tell you why I thought it was one of the greatest.” YES!!! An author telling kids you have to have supporting details.

So to date myself I do remember the Miracle on Ice. I was at the Court Club in Denver. I had just finished having my dad beat me at racquet ball for the 8,000,000 time. It was exciting to watch the final minutes. Even further back in time I had a poster of Secretariat hanging on my wall in my room, so it was fun to read the chapter about the wonderful horse.

The book has all the components of a good non-fiction text. It has heading, captions, tables, the list goes on. There is also a CD that has recordings of some of the great moments. I imagine that when this goes in the new arrival basket it will quickly end up in a book bag.


Book Courtesy of the Publisher.