Balls! (review)

Once past the prepubescent gigglefest Rosen's exclamatory title is bound to provoke, readers will discover a lively discourse on a host of spheroids (and one notable ellipse) that make the sporting world go round. Each brief chapter covers the manufacture, quality standards for professional play, and lots of trivia for each featured ball. Photographs happily coexist with cartoon illustrations and a multitude of fonts, and the layout just barely escapes bedlam with the occasional peeks of calming white space. Basket-, soccer, foot-, tennis, hand-, golf, volley-, table tennis, and "odd" balls step successively into the spotlight, and each unnumbered section is introduced with a riddle at the close of the previous spread. Plenty of corny jokes and asides keep the text bouncy, but there's also a substantial amount of information useful in comparing the dimensions and compositions of the various orbs. A list for further reading, heavy on websites, offers further diversion when the skies are rainy or the courts are full.