Baseball, Football, Daddy and Me

The author covers many bases in this book that depicts a boy and his dad watching a number of different sports: baseball, football, tennis, soccer, hockey, golf, basketball. Brown's colorful, contemporary, double-page illustrations of the various sporting events are accompanied by four lines of rhymed verse. In attempting to capture the boy's perspective on the outings, the verse has a sing-song quality that grows monotonous by the time the two wrap up their tour of the playing fields. Also, these verses frequently don't scan correctly, and more than once Friend employs strained or convoluted word order to achieve a rhyme. Fortunately, the book's final pages offer more variety, as the boy reveals that he doesn't really care what sporting event he attends; the important thing is being with his dad. And his very favorite pastime, he decides, is playing catch with dad. The book closes with a most endearing picture of dad carrying his tired son home from the park. Ages 3-8. (Mar.)