Sporty books do sell. Like Doret said, it’s about getting to the girls who are programmed to think these books don’t exist or afraid ‘it’s going to be another novel about a ‘cliched’ tomboy. I’ve had book signings at softball tournaments and sold over one hundred copies of SCREWBALL and CHANGE UP. It’s an untapped market.

More sporty books coming soon.

I haven’t read it, but I know that Screwball by Keri Mikulski (hope I spelled that right) is about girls playing baseball, and there’s a sequel.

The Million Dollar Goal by Dan Gutman has a girl protagonist and involves a soccer (set in the US) contest. It’s MG, but it was the first book I ever got signed by an author, so I’ll never forget it. I’ve read it about 5 times.

Now I am dreaming of YA books featuring the martial arts….

Also looking at older books, in Noel Streatefeild’s “Tennis Shoes” (1937) the girls are the two most talented tennis players in the family (one a potential star), and “White Boots” (1951) is about two girl ice skaters. A bit more YA is “The Silver Seven” (Rita Ritchie, 1972) which is also about a girl who wants to be a champion ice skater.

Headley’s Girl Overboard is a great book. I loved the snowboarding protagonist.

I don’t know if books with girls playing sports would be bestsellers, but I think there’s a big enough market for them to be a solid, consistent, profitable sellers.

If publishers determine need for more sports books w/ female protagonist based off of the sales of whats already out, of course there won’t be more. No one knows about the books that are out Sports books with girls don’t get publicity. The whole thing makes me want to scream.

I really appreciate Justine, for wanting to do this. Hopefully people will find a few great sports titles and after reading the goodness that is a female athlete begin to question why this genre is so lacking.

The next time you’re at it, google sports books for kids. I’m astounded at the lack of reviews out there. Thankfully, Doret’s one of the few that realize that sports and books just go together.

All the best,
Lori
Get in the Game–Read

There was a 1950s author of YA girls’ books, Betty Cavanna, in which each book centered on an activity. One was Angel on Skis, another was Girls Can Fly, Too! Each had some element of romance, but half the time the girl and boy just ended up friends – the focus was always on the thing she was learning to do, in which he was also involved (sometimes ahead of her, sometimes learning beside her). So there were sports (or something like flying a plane), learning one’s own capabilities, and cross-gender friendships, all in there. I’d love to see someone write updated versions.

That wasn’t what struck me most about How to Ditch Your Fairy. What I loved there was the characters’ joy in physicality, in challenging their bodies and seeing what they could do. I can’t think of a lot of books that convey that really well; maybe Sara Hall’s Drawn to the Rhythm, a rowing book that’s exactly about reclaiming that joy, but it’s not a YA book.

I think the lack of that joy is exactly why so many girls don’t like sports. I for one absolutely suck at ball and team sports. Even when I played Ultimate Frisbee as an adult, I advanced all the way from horrible to pretty bad; in contrast, my husband (then new boyfriend) came out just once and was pretty good. He had all those basic skills I’d never developed. I’m hoping all the young girls who play soccer today will have those, but I think some of us just need to be exposed to different sports. If I’d played Little League as a kid, I’d have been better equipped, but I doubt I’d have been good. I can run but I can’t judge distance well, and don’t have a tactical brain. But I enjoyed gymnastics, could maybe have been OK with actual coaching. When I learned to row as an adult it was a revelation because *no one* had skills that translated to it, so I was starting out on the same level as everyone else. I don’t have the height or the slow-twitch muscle fibers to ever be great, but there’s nothing to keep me from being good.

I don't know many YA sports novel in general, to be honest. I was the type of girl who hated gym, so I went out of my way to avoid all books that had sport activities in them. It was only very recently (as in, this summer) when tried my hardest to find sports fiction reading material featuring female athletes – specifically, sports manga w/ girls. Reading this interview brought back all my frustration I remember feeling as I would browse through the shoujo manga section (like YA/MG comics, but geared specifically towards girls), checking out all the titles that had the "sports" label on them, and only to find out in disgust that it was 9 out of 10 times about girls who were in LOVE with their dream boy athlete and basically being the cheerleader/supporter girlfriend. (Nothing wrong with romance about girls liking sporty boys! Just that I really wanted to read about *female* athletes and the fact that this romance would be categorized as "sports" made me really frustrated.) Even after all my searching, I only ended up finding ONE title in the shoujo section with girls playing sports (Crimson Hero). And then I would look at the endless variety of sports manga for boys and rage with no small amount of jealousy.

…Ahaha… Long comment is long. ToT

Always nice to find out more about our fellow bloggers! Doret is a kick.

Also when I was a kid, there was a whole series of books by different authors about mixed sports teams (there was one about touch rugby by David Hill, which was my favourite, and ones about cricket, netball, hockey and basketball). Growing up in a sports obsessed family, with a little sister who lived and breathed basketball and netball, she would actually read these books so my mother would buy them.

I think it was a really popular genre in New Zealand children’s writing for a while there. But then everyone I knew played sport through primary and secondary school (I am the least coordinated person ever yet I played netball and hockey all through high school, and my high school, which heavily encouraged playing seriously and forming social teams, had 55 netball teams at one point, which was about half the school).

I’ll be twitting this on @LatinoBookNews Doret do you have a twitter name? I’ve looked all over and can’t find one.
Thank you,
Jo Ann
BronzeWord Latino Authors
http://authorslatino.com/wordpress

I’ve gotten readers come up to me about one of the main characters in my book being a volleyball player (with a college scholarship no less) even though she never plays volleyball in the book. They all do archery, though.

Wasn’t the one girl in Travelling Pants a big time soccer player? Or was that only in the movie?

Then, of course, there’s everyone’s favorite jock, Harry Potter. It was a fake sport, but it was a sport, it was a big part of the books, and it was the only thing he was really good at.

Great post! This is so interesting!