Sports Dust Jacket Covers

I think the favorite part of my collection is the juvenile series books. As I was reorganizing some of my shelves, I came across a book whose dust jacket illustrated a sport which I really had never heard of. See if you can guess what sport that might be. That book will be shown tomorrow.

I thought it might be interesting to show a sampling of other sports' covers. Of course, the most common sports like baseball and football are best represented. But as you can see here, other sports have been seen. Here is a sampling of interesting covers. Basketball, hockey, crew, tennis,and track are shown. Sport or not, cheerleading is also here. No auto racing is included.

I have tried to just give one example for each sport. I am well aware that there are many more.

Harold Sherman-Juvenile Series Advertisement

I happened across this excellent card advertising the juvenile series of Harold Sherman. He wrote books for eleven different juvenile series. Mostly sports books but he wrote a few non sports juvenile series. This included a few titles in the multi authored Buddy book series published by Grosset and Dunlap, the books of the Tahara Series and Goldsmith's Fun Loving Gang Series. . His juvenile books were written from the mid-1920's until the early 1930's.

With the card today I though I would show a couple of book pictures and give a brief biography. I was totally surprised to find that Sherman has a website dedicated to his life and work. (haroldsherman.com). So the bottom line is that if you need to know more- look there. This biography comes from that site.



Briefly, Harold Sherman (1898-1987) was born in Michigan. After a stint as a newspaper reporter he moved to New York and started writing the juvenile series books. Subsequently he moved to Hollywood and wrote screenplays and self-help books. Apparently he was well known for his psychic research, ESP and parapsychology. He spent his later years in Arkansas where he wrote and was active in civic affairs.


Sherman's life had many twists and turns especially with his involvement with the Urantia Book which is a cosmological history of the universe and God, etc. This is way beyond the depth of this blog.

He wrote many books beside his juvenile books most of which appear to be self-help type. Their titles can be seen at his website.


On the reverse of the card four books are shown. Grosset and Dunlap published all of the books. The three football books were part of the 10 volume Gridiron Series whereas the Bases Full book was part of the 6 volume Home Run Series. The card was probably published in 1928 which is the date of the latest of the four books-Block That Kick and Bases Full.

More about Sherman's book series will be forthcoming.