Bat 6

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

Approx. 5 hours
3 cassettes

Bat 6 - that's the softball game played every year between the sixth-grade girls of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge. All the girls - Beautiful Hair Hallie, Manzanita who gets the spirit, the twins Lola and Lila, Tootie, Shadean - they've been waiting for their turn at Bat 6 since they could first toss a ball.

This time there's a newcomer on each Aki, at first base for the Ridgers, who just returned with her family from a place she's too embarrassed to talk about. And Shazam, center field for Barlow, who's been shunted around by her mother since her father was killed on December 7, 1941.

The adults of the two towns would rather not speak about why Aki's family had to "go away." They can't quite admit just how "different" Shazam is. And that is why the two girls are on a collision course that explodes catastrophically on the morning of Bat 6, the day they've been preparing for all their lives.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Middle Grade, Sports, Historical, Fiction, Childrens

Audio Cassette

First published May 28, 1998

About the author

On August 25th, Virginia Euwer Wolff was born in Portland, Oregon. Her family lived on an apple and pear orchard near Mount Hood. Her father died when she was five years old and she admits her childhood was pretty messed up, but she held things together with her violin. She graduated from Smith College. She raised a son and daughter before going back to teaching high school English.
She was almost fifty years old when she started writing children books. Virginia thought she might have one or two good books in her before the end but that was proven wrong. Today, she is no longer teaching, but writes full-time.

When Wolff was asked why she writes for kids and not grown-ups, She responded, "Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience."

Ms. Wolff has received many awards for her works, which include the Golden Kite Award for Fiction for her book Make Lemonade, the ALA Notable Book for Children for The Mozart Season and many, many others.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/virgin...

Reviews

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please see my for stars as four and a half. Or perhaps you're seeing five stars. This is one of those I'm not sure of: did I like it enough to give it five stars?

It’s 1949 and two small communities in Oregon have been getting together for fifty years for sixth grade girls from each community to play softball. The girls train all year for this one game, everyone from both communities come. People in town have long memories about past players and games.

Aki’s mother was on the 1930 MVP. After being in the internment camps, they have lived all over, but have returned to their orchards so Aki can play first base for the Bear Creek Ridge team.

All year long, Shazam’s new classmates, she lives with her grandmother now near Barlow Road Grade School, have kept quiet about how strange she is, how broken by racism, neglect and mental illness, she is. If anyone of them had shared how she speaks and thinks, perhaps she wouldn’t have done what she did. And now many of them carry this guilt.

What I really like about this novel is that it is told in the first person voices of the 20 girls on the two teams. There’s a handy line- up of the girls, their positions and teams, in the beginning of the book.

This is Lorelei’s dad, a pacifist, speaking. “Every town in America would have cheered this child in 1943. In 1944. In 1945. America has told her what to be and suddenly we are completely modern in 1949 and now we revile her.” (170)

This was written as a middle grade or early young adult book, but I think it may be more promoting of discussion for adult book groups than Snow Falling on Cedars, which okay I haven't read in fifteen or twenty years, and Tallgrass.

Read for Battle of the Books, participants said it was a particularly good book; I requested this book from interlibrary loan.

[Al_jessica Eaton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book tells the story of a group of 6 grade girls growing up in California shortly after World War 2 and the bombing of Pearl harbor. Each year the 6th grade girls compete against the neighboring town in a Softball game. This year each team has a new girl that has many secrets from her past that threaten to be exposed all year and finally are revealed during the big game. The story is somewhat hard to follow because there are so many characters and it is written from multiple perspectives. Decent, but not a must read.

[Adam Mourad · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Bat 6" was a very disappointing book. I actually enjoyed "the house on mango street" more; even though I really hated it. The book sleeve was deceptively interesting, unlike the inside, which was a bore since the start. This book bombards you with useless details, characters that lack essence or differentiation, as well as an agonizingly slow-moving, uneventful plot. I personally felt like, the book was all revolving around that one moment when Shazam elbows Aki in the face at the baseball game. Believe it or not, I feel like if the book was just the baseball game and it's aftermath, it would've been equally good. Well, I guess I'm being a bit too negative. I mean there had to be something they did right. Believe it or not, no. This book was bad on all levels. I found the perspective switching confusing, especially by the end, when both schools started talking at once. For some reason, the characters were annoying me to death. In addition, the book was just bland and unrefreshing. This just didn't make you want to keep on reading. Here's one thing I found acceptable: Shazam and Aki's childhood stories. These two characters backstories is what connects this book to world war 2, as well as, the events at Pearl Harbor,HA which is where Shazam or Shirley's dad dies. The story was actually quite emotional, and according to "History.com", the USS arizona, where Shazam's dad dies within the book is an actual ship, that coincidentally never got repaired in real life. Shazam gets these weird dreams of fire, for some reason, even though her dad died underwater. Ever since, she hasn't ever trusted any Japanese people. That to me was a big message by the author, trying to show how the war was supposed to achieve world peace, but actually, all it did was cause Americans, like Shazam, to hate the "Japs", as she refers to them. On the other hand, there's Aki, who was sent to a Japanese internment camp during the war, where no one heard from her. After the war, she was released and was trying so hard to blend in and let go of her Japanese side, by forgetting some words of her language. This shows you that their life was already hard enough, and all that the Americans, like Shazam, did was put more pressure on them through racism and stereotypes. What's weird is that, the Japanese, like Aki, are willing to forgive and forget, but some Americans are being unforgiving and selfish. Isn't that ironic. This was a way of saying that the Americans were the reason for the war and they need to be more forgiving. I appreciated the author's different ways of speech depending on how educated or uneducted the person is. Shazam has a different way of talking then Aki, for example.
The author does some of these little things and techniques that often go unnoticed by the average reader. Honestly, I would never read this book unless it was homework. I just wouldn't. I definetely don't at all recommend this book for anyone at any age. I admit, it had a good idea but the execution was just off. As I've established before, this was disappointing and is great evidence of how you shouldn't judge a book by it's cover. Ever. Or else, you'll pay.

[Carmine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A challenging read told from the perspective of 24 different girls. It can be a little tricky to keep the various narrators straight, but combined the voices paint a compelling story of post-WWII life in the rural Northwest. Two small towns have a long standing softball game that pits the 6th grade girls against each other- the Bat 6 game. This year each town has its champion- for Bear Creek Ridge it is Aki whose mother had also been an MVP softball player and whose family has finally moved back home to their orchard after trying to resettle after internment. At the Barlow school it is a new girl with extraordinary natural athletic talent and a hatred of Japanese Americans stemming from her father's death at Pearl Harbor. The two are on a collision course culminating at the Bat 6 game where the attitudes and beliefs of two towns will be revealed and played out.

It is impossible to life in the northwest without eventually confronting the topic of the internment of Japanese Americans. Bat 6 is an example of how pernicious racism is when it is swept under the rug and not talked about. What makes this book a valuable read is how it deals directly with the racism faced by Japanese American families and doesn't shy away from a realistic portrayal of that time and place. For me one of the most powerful images about the internment (besides seeing a preserved copy of the actual exclusion order poster at the UW libraries) is down at the Bainbridge Island Historical Museum. There are two high school year book pages- the senior graduating class in 1941 and the class a year later. 1941 shows a pretty diverse student body and a year later half the class has disappeared. It is startling and shocking. What is even more shocking is how few of these families returned and what they faced when they did.

[Mahlak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bat 6 takes place in 1949. This story focuses on two particular groups of sixth grade girls preparing for the Bat 6 softball game; Bear Creek Ridge and Barlow team. Although, one new girl joins the Barlow team and another new girl (well.. not exactly new since she lived there before) joins the Bear Creek Ridge team. The main conflict in the story surrounds these two young ladies. One who is Japanese and one who hates Japanese people because of what they did to her father. This girls hatred for Japanese people can result to some serious conflict and can actually hurt someone. I gave this book 3 stars because I like the story line and everything, but I thought the book was boring. It was boring because the only part that was interesting was during the softball game where the conflict and action occurred. Also, in the story the author uses multiple different perspectives of each girl on the team in different chapters for each team, I was able to understand and quickly follow what the other speaker was saying. Though during the part of the game, the author would conjoin different characters from different teams in one chapter, I had to keep going back to the beginning of the book where it shows where each team member belongs in which team and that was very confusing.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is on our shelves for struggling readers and I'm not entirely sure why.

Struggling readers have a difficult time reading and understanding dialect. While dialect adds a more authentic voice, it confuses students who are still working on spelling.

I loved the ever-changing narrators but I got confused at times as to whom was speaking. If I got confused, I can only imagine how my students feel.

The topic, racism, is a good discussion builder. I think most of my students believe that racism is only directed towards African Americans.

Perhaps this book would work well as a read-aloud. I don't have enough voices, though, to cover all the narrators. Perhaps I could have the students trade off parts.

We don't often see books about sports featuring female athletes. That was a nice change. I think, too, it could lead to some interesting research on the history of the sport.

I'm just not sure about this book.

[Adam N. · Rating 2 out of 5]

BAT-6 was a book about a conflict between a Japanese girl and and American girl set shortly after the events of the Pearl Harbor bombing, and the American girl is taking out her rage on the other girl because she lost her father in the bombing. Both are in opposite teams of softball, and as time leads up to the day they compete, a catastrophe will occur with no way of stopping it. The book was more about softball than about the actual history message to me, and the multiple perspectives got tiresome after a while, as sometimes you lost track of which character's perspective you were reading from. Most of the book was filler that was unnecessary and it should've been more focused on the two main characters, Shazam and Aki. In my opinion, BAT-6 was okay, but not too great.

[Bill Tillman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A story from the lips of those who lived through it. South of Portland is two small communities, Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge. In 1949 they were playing the 50th anniversary softball game of sixth grade girls.

Racial prejudice still existed between Japanese Americans and those who had been in the war. It is an outstanding book that should be on every sixth grade reading list. Showing both sides of this terrible conflict with compassion and understanding.

[Kasper · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book thought it had a moral, but it didn't.

[Andrew Canfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bat Six is a novel by author Virginia Euwer Wolff fashioned against a mid-twentieth century backdrop.

The book deserves credit in that everything about its setup was intentional. Taking place four years after the conclusion of World War Two, it deals with the raw feelings left behind from that bitter struggle for Pacific supremacy. The book demonstrates how Americans were still dealing with anger from both the attack on Pearl Harbor and subsequent warfare in the Pacific, as well as how American- born Japanese (Nisei) were still stinging over the manner in which they had been interned during the duration of the war.

The narrative jumps back and forth between the perspectives of girls on two different softball teams. This could have been an effective storytelling strategy, but instead it becomes confusing thanks to the huge roster of ancillary characters. Darlene, “Beautiful Hair” Hallie, Alva, Manzanita, Kate, Little Peggy (just to name a few); juggling all of these girls and their respective points of view becomes head-spinning.

Virginia Wolff also varies her grammar, spelling, and vernacular based on which character’s perspective is being portrayed. While this takes skill and requires an author with a well-developed capacity for the English language (a trait Wolff possesses), it nevertheless adds little besides choppier reading.

The titular Bat Six is an annual softball tournament between two Oregon schools: Barlow Creek Ridge and Barlow Grade Schools. While it usually is an uneventful game asides from the rivalry aspect, the 1949 match up is different. Barlow Road has a new player named Shirley (who goes by the Marvel Comic nickname Shazam), and as the plot unfolds the reader discovers that she has brought a large amount of baggage to her new school. It is revealed that her father (who it is assumed was in the Navy) died in the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack. She seems to have never let go of the pain caused by this sudden loss.

As Wolff tells the story from the perspective of multiple girls, the short, almost incoherent glimpses into Shirley’s thinking indicate she has some sort of brain impairment. What also becomes obvious is her disdain for all things Japan stemming from the circumstance of her dad’s death. As evidence of her prejudice, she even storms out of the room during a Christmas pageant merely because a student of Japanese ancestry is present in the room.

There is also a new player on Barlow Creek Ridge’s softball team: Aki Mikami comes from a formerly interned Japanese American family. Her perspective reveals that, like Shirley, she has had a difficult upbringing thanks to problems caused by World War Two. Neither girl has come from what one pictures as a stable family life. She is also welcomed by her own team with open arms as an addition to the roster capable of helping their side to the Bat Six victory.

It is around the tension surrounding these two girls, Shazam and Aki, that the the novel would have been better off focusing almost all of its attention.

The lessons of forgiveness and of not holding on to the past do come across, but they are garbled by the perspective jumping and obscured by the intentionally poor word usages. Bat Six is a strong book, one capable of teaching readers the issues which can be caused by refusing to let go of the past. But it never fully hits its potential, falling short of being the home run it could have been. Therefore it is a somewhat, though not highly, recommendable work of fiction.

-Andrew Canfield Denver, Colorado

[Kimberly Sabatini · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bat 6, a story of two teams of 6th-grade girls who are ready to play their annual softball game, is also a walk back to 1949 and what life was like in a small town recovering from the war as they are also trying to heal from the impact Japanese internment camps on their community. While this book has moments that make a modern-day reader suck in a breath, we're reminded that history can not and should not be made to be politically correct. A story like this is meant to make us a little uncomfortable, and because this story is brimming with hope, growth, and human kindness, you will find yourself rooting for all the girls on the Barlow and Ridge teams--and everyone in the stands.

Bat 6 would make a wonderful television series. With so many characters, there would be an exponential amount of space to bring this--A League of Their Own MEETS American Girls story to life.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I now live in the town where Virginia Euwer Wolff was a high school teacher. In the year that I have lived here (Hood River, OR), I have learned a great deal about the issues raised by this sensitive and brave book. The treatment of the Japanese Americans before and after WW II, the internment camps, the hostile environment which awaited them when they were released, and the good people who stood up to their neighbors by protecting their orchards while they were gone, and who welcomed them back. All this complexity portrayed through the eyes and minds of 11 year old girls in 1949 is a brilliant piece of writing. I appreciate the moral complexity of the portrayals and the decision not to make everything come out all pretty at the end.

[Maren · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of my favorite books when I was a kid! My mom gave it to me I believe around 3rd grade in the hopes that it would inspire me to become a softball star (sadly for her it did not). I recently listened to the audiobook while painting my apartment and honestly it holds up. Things are very clunky late 90s in places, but I think with a good teacher this could still be an extremely effective way to teach the postwar years and the start of the baby boom. So much context here flew over my head when I originally read this.

My biggest criticism and really only criticism is that I wish Aki's parents had a voice in the way Lorelai and Daisy's fathers do. Their silence could be read as part of the metanarrative I guess, by why nothing even within the privacy of their home?

The Shazam's context -- being extremely traumatized and living with the stigma of having a young, unwed mother -- was really interestingly and compassionately written for coming so long before the age of e v e r ything being about trauma.

All in all these characters are more like... didactic historical tropes bumping into each other than realized or relatable characters, but I think this book occupies a really important and, as far as I know, otherwise empty place in middle grade historical fiction about the postwar us. The way the anticipating builds and eventually boils over throughout the course of the novel is so true to how it felt to reach those big hyper-local idiosyncratic milestones of growing up.

[Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

4.3/10

It's a strong idea, overall. Recovery from Japanese internment is something just as worth exploring as the Japanese internment itself. But this is just too muddled to be truly powerful. Shazam and Aki as POV characters, mayyyyybe with a third tossed in, would be a really powerful combination. But the total confusion of something like 24 POV characters (I didn't count myself, but I saw someone else give that number) makes things incredibly muddy almost immediately.

There's power to the book in the time when it does hit (haha). But it's just overwhelmed by its own bulk and that power gets lost 90% of the time.

(Also, wtf, does Shazam have a titanium elbow or something?)

[Addi Ganschow · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.65 Stars ~ This book had a great overall message, but the plot was really confusing. There were so, so many grammar mistakes, missing apostrophes from conjunctions, and there were so many characters that were switched around to that you had to go back a few pages just so you would know whose point of view that scene was coming from. A couple of times, something next to completely unrelated to the previous sentence would pop up, which was really confusing. I probably wouldn’t recommend this book.

[Shaan Jagtiani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bat 6 is about a annual softball game between the sixth grader girls of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge. In the book this year was 50th game between the two schools. Both teams had newcomers who had some rough memories. On the game-day after all the prep the teams go head to head but it ends up with a real catastrophe. I feel like this book had good story outline/idea to teach us a lesson and also had good transition between character's point of view,

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit some irritation with dialect, and with so many different characters taking turns as voice, there can be some confusion. It nonetheless held my interest, and it hints at some good points. It probably could have been more effective with a bit more fleshing out. As it was, it was an abrupt ending.

I think the point of just trying to hush up any unpleasantness instead of working through it, and how that can make matters worse, is worth fleshing out.

[Helena Soares · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was okay, and the plot and characters had a lot of potential. However, the entire book is written from 6th graders' perspectives, and the grammar and sentence structure is that of a sixth grader's. This would be okay for some of the book, as it can give a realistic feel, but having it continue for the entire book pulled away from the story.

[Steven Yoder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bat 6 is about an annual game of girls softball for 6th graders between schools of neighboring towns. It is set after WWII and centers on an act of violence that occurs during the game because of the war. I'm not sure if the author is Christian but the hero turns out to be a Christian girl who goes against her friends to bring about an act of reconciliation.

[Kate N. Ewing · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this post-World War II novel with multiple POVs of the girls on two 6th grade softball teams. Good followup to books and units on the U.S. Japanese internment camps. What happened when they got home? Grades 4-8.

[Tamara Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a perfect book for 2018. What do you do when you know one of your classmates or neighbors is racist? Do you turn away or make excuses for them? The book focuses on the bystanders as they wonder what they should have and could have done to avert a vicious racist attack.

[Damian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that this book was alright. The main reason I did not really like it is because it’s about baseball. I don’t really know much about the sport or enjoy it. Overall I liked the dialogue and the characters.

[Michelle Stimpson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked the idea of this better than the execution. Very interesting non-fiction topic that I've never seen done before, but it's a slow burn told from multiple perspectives and fear it wouldn't be very accessible to my middle schoolers.

[Katy Jeffords · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF at page 70. Tried to read it over the weekend because I have a class set and it aligns with my social studies standards but it was just not interesting😔 “life is too short to read a book you don’t like”

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5…I first read this years ago when teaching, and it holds up. What a freight train of foreboding this story delivers, and I love the voice of the narrators (the members of the teams)…if their voices tend to be pretty similar..save for Shazam, and Susannah.

[Abby Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely piece of historical fiction for middle grade. 1949 setting with 6th grade girls practicing for a big softball game. An racist incident leaves all questioning who’s responsible. Written from multiple points of view in the girls voices.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Should be required reading with discussion following in middle schools in Oregon. Not bad for adults, either.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty scattered story with a baseball theme that ended up with zero payoff. The message was certainly good, but the delivery left a lot to be desired.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

A little confusing with the changing narrative but overall a powerful and complex piece of historical fiction.

[Olivia]

it was good it had an very unexpected turn at the end