I wouldn't say it's a nitpick. Rationals are fractions of integers, not just any fractions at all. Rationals are _examples_ of reals, but it's bad pedagogy to say "fractions, which are called reals" because it sounds like the authors are giving a definition of reals. While they technically did not say this was a definition, it is sloppy.

Fractions = rational numbers, which are an infinitely small subset of the real numbers. The rest of the reals are irrational numbers, of which pi and e are examples.