The Kid Who Only Read Matt Christopher |

Like many kids, I spent a good deal of my childhood playing sports in my backyard. When it was too cold, I settled for the basement.

When I wasn’t accidently knocking down the fruit on the backyard trees or shooting tennis balls against the basement furnace – much to my dad’s ire – I was imagining myself as a sports hero scoring the winning goal, shooting the winning basket, or hitting the winning home run.

It’s not surprising that when I was first introduced to a Matt Christopher book as an eight-year old boy (my mom was savvy enough to select one for me, likely because the library was out of Goosebumps), I was instantly hooked. The books are centred around young characters living out their sports fantasies.

The first Matt Christopher book I read was The Kid Who Only Hit Homers. Of course I was intrigued by the title; home runs were all I hit when I was playing baseball in the basement, where a home run just simply had to go over the sink (hitting the basement window was a grand slam, even if there weren’t runners on base). Up until this point, my burgeoning reading life had never included a sports book that had me so engaged. I read every Matt Christopher book that I could find. For a whole year of pleasure reading, I read nothing but Matt Christopher.

I’m pleased that the Toronto Public Library continues to offer a wide selection of Matt Christopher books. Nearly 20 years after his death, the Matt Christopher series continues to live on, with new books appearing under the Matt Christopher trademark by authors like Paul Mantell and Stephanie True Peters.

While compiling this blog, I came across several other authors that write in this genre, which caters to this particular age-group (7-12). If you have a child who loves sports as much as I did, you might want to add these to their library wish-list:

Tim Green, Mike Lupica, and Jake Maddox (ebooks only)