Fans of CBC Radio in southern Ontario have come to know Kevin Sylvester as the man who delivers their morning sports reports with a quirky sense of humour, a love of obscure trivia, and a presentation of the hard facts and numbers that’s always accurate. So it makes perfect sense that Sylvester’s first book for young readers should bring this endearing combination to the printed page.

Sports Hall of Weird – enhanced by Sylvester’s own black-and-white line drawings on almost every page– is a short but entertaining compendium of some of the most bizarre factoids and minutiae from all over the wide world of sports. It won’t appeal to die-hard young sports buffs who want scores and stats about their favourite players and teams (there are certainly enough fact books around to meet those needs). But it will have a definite attraction for those who appreciate the silly side of the pastimes that everyone often takes just a little too seriously.

Sometimes Sylvester adds a touch of the gross and just-plain-strange to his descriptions of weird sports happenings. Did you know, for example, that the hosts of the 2002 World Cup (held jointly in Japan and Korea) had to ban the sale of dog meat by street vendors, fearing it would be a little too tough for foreign fans to stomach? Or that a Pittsburgh Steelers football fan was buried with his favourite stadium seats as a gravestone? Or that at least two major league baseball players have killed birds by hitting them with balls during the course of a game? (Just in case you’re keeping score, one was an accident and the other probably wasn’t.)

The result is a delightful (though small) package that will tweak that love of the strange that many young readers develop along with their fondness of sports. And as an added bonus, there’s enough obscure material in here to keep adults highly amused as well.