Holiday Gift Guide: Game Day by Kevin Sylvester

Budding athletes and sports fans will enjoy Game Day: Meet the People Who Make it Happen (Annick Press). Brightly illustrated and breezily written, Game Day shows young readers some of the myriad people who make sports go. Not the athletes, but the behind the scenes people who few give any thought to at all.

Each of 21 chapters is a brief and punchy biography of someone you’ve probably never heard of but whose role in the whole is immediately apparent. People like Nicole Sherry, who is the head groundskeeper at Oriole Park in Baltimore. Or Rick Curran, NHL super agent. Sports cameraman Brian Burnett and baseball organist Bobby Freeman.

Clearly aimed at reluctant readers, yet jam packed (action packed?) with great information, photos and other interesting visuals, Game Day will give young sports fans something to think about.

Sylvester knows what he’s writing about here: a broadcaster for CBC Radio, he knows just what it is to be behind the scenes. ◊

Sienna Powers is a transplanted Calgarian who lives and works in Vancouver, B.C. She is a writer and conceptual artist.