The Best Basketball Player Ever - Heather Payer - Smith

The Best Basketball Player Ever by Heather Payer-Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

'Tommy is the best basketball player when playing his video games. He wins every time! However, when his mother tells him to go outside and play he finds that playing with the real basketball doesn't come so easy for him. He can't dribble, pass or even shoot! To make matters worse the neighborhood kids laugh at his attempts. He decides to give up and only play video games, until his mother challenges him to keep practicing. Before long, he finds himself improving and on his way to becoming the best basketball player ever!'

This book was sent to me from the author in exchange for an honest review. I took the book into the classroom to get opinions from the children on the book. They are 6.

The font is a nice size in the book and this allows children to read it aloud to themselves, we shared as a class.

The story is about Tommy, he loves to play basketball on his computer game and always wins. One day his mum challenges him to play basketball for real. The children enjoyed the story, they did say they didn't like it when children from the neighbour hood poked fun at him when he was not very good.

The children got the message from the story about how important it is to play outside and get exercise and also they need to practice in order to become better.

I feel that when mum explains how to play basketball this is done in significant detail and the children I was reading too became distracted during this point, this could be down to their age and that they do not want to know in detail about how to play they just wanted him to play.

If I had read this book to a different age group this could have come across differently I don't know. I did ask the children how it could have been made better and all of them said playing a game and winning. From the illustration on the front of the book, I feel this is what they were expecting.

The illustrations in the book could have been a little better I feel as they didn't encourage me or the children to view them for a long time.

Overall I feel that the author has produced a successful book in encouraging sport within children. In today's society computer games and technology are very accessible and I feel many children forget how to 'play'.

After reading this book to the children, they all told me over the summer they will want to go outside and play. *Fingers crossed they do!*