Sports Illustrated Kids: The Football Fanbook by Gary Gramling

About 12 years ago I took my current job working for a university in the South. Before that, neither the undergrad or grad school that I attended had a football team. (Or, as we liked to say at Emory University, we were undefeated in football.) However, this lack of watching football left me woefully unprepared for my job, where I have to travel throughout the state to meet with businesses. I manage the requisite "visiting" before the start of each meeting just fine until August, when small talk moves from tomatoes and okra to football-and it really was just football. Oh, how I wish I had been gifted a copy of this book years ago. It really would have helped me not seem quite so daft.

Title: The Football Fanbook: Everything You Need to Become a Gridiron Know-it-All (A Sports Illustrated Kids Book)

Author: Gary Gramling and The Editors of Sports Illustrated Kids

• Age Range: 8 - 12 years
• Grade Level: 3 and up
• Lexile Measure: 1080 (What's this?)
• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Sports Illustrated (August 8, 2017)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1683300076
• ISBN-13: 978-1683300076

About the Book

Everything You Need to Become a Gridiron Know-it-All

So you're a football fan and now you want to take your passion for the game to the next level? The Football Fanbook from Sports Illustrated Kids is just what you need. A key addition to every young sports fanatic's library, The Football Fanbook is filled with fun trivia and unique lingo to impress friends, illustrated behind-the-skills how-to's, important game-winning strategies, and much more. Readers will sound like experts in no time.

My Review

We are a few days into the preseason, and we are blessed with stories about football from every angle. You have the lead story in the Sports section for the AJC (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution) about the 1970's Falcon's team. It is a throwback story perfectly suited to get football fans in the spirit of nostalgia and revelry about the game. This book would also be a great gift for the budding fan of football to not only read up on what is relevant now, but to also learn the history of the game to hang with the biggest of fans.


As with all Sports Illustrated Kids books, this one is visually engaging with glossy, full color pages. There are lots of pictures, illustrations, changes in fonts, graphs, and large, eye-catching numbers. It includes a wide range of lingo, trivia, stats, and skills necessary to play or watch the game.

I lent the book to one of my 10 year old daughter's friends who plays football. He eats, lives, and breaths football. He gave the book a rave review with the exception that he already knew most of the stats and trivia. My friend and I quizzed him using the book before he had a chance to read it, and he knew almost everything. I also asked him if he saw this at a book fair at school would he pay the list price for the book. This is something that I think is really important to understand with the older kids, as many of them are using their own money at the book fairs and can be quite shrewd on how they spend their money. He felt that $19.99 was too much to spend on a book about football, but he still wanted his mom to pay for it. His point is that some of the material in the book will be outdated in a year or so. I can appreciated that honest feedback.

Lucky for you, my dearest readers, the book is on sale on Amazon for $13.59.  And that, I think is well worth the value of the book.



FTC Disclosure: Thank you Sports Illustrated Kids for sending me a copy of The Football Fanbook in exchange for a fair and honest review. This post contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you purchase the books through these links, I receive a small portion of the payment, which I use to support this blog. Thanks for your support!