Double Play

Lorimer Sports Stories

by Sara Cassidy

Excellent Book

Genres: Sports, LGBT, Fiction, Realistic Fiction

128 pages, Paperback

Published March 1, 2013

About the author

Sara Cassidy is an award-winning Canadian author of 20 acclaimed books for children and teens. Her early novel GENIUS JOLENE won the 2020 Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize. Her middle-grade novel NEVERS was nominated for the Governor General's Literary Award in Young People's Literature and the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Two novels appeared on Kirkus's Best Middle Grade Books of 2018 and 2016: THE GREAT GOOGLINI and A BOY NAMED QUEEN.

She is the author of the highly praised picture book FLOCK, and the wordless graphic novels KUNOICHI BUNNY and HELEN'S BIRDS, a 2021 Canadian selection for the Silent Books Collection (IBBY). Her board books include I MAKE SPACE, about creating boundaries, THE SUN IS A PEACH and THE MOON IS A SILVER POND, which received a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Sara lives on Vancouver Island and loves to visit classrooms over Zoom/Skype/Teams. sarascassidy@gmail.com

Reviews

[Colette · Rating 3 out of 5]

It defies its genre by being a sports book with a female protagonist AND exploring the life of the children of a gay couple. Quirky but compelling and a great read for book clubs.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twelve-year-old Allie’s life is rather unsettled these days. After her father left, her mother started dating another woman, who has now moved in to Allie’s house—with her despicable eleven-year-old son Miles, who seems determined to make Allie’s life miserable, as if the narrow minds in their small town weren’t doing a good enough job. Allie’s great love is baseball; she’s been playing with the same group of girls for years, and has a great pitching arm. When she gets the opportunity to pitch for a boys’ team for a season, she takes it, though she’s sorry to leave her friends even for just a season. Being on the boys’ team is hard, even if she learns a lot, but what makes it even more complicated is that Miles—who quit the team when she joined—is now campaigning to be allowed to play on the girls’ team. Allie knows he’s doing it just to spite her—or is he?

I really liked this one. It brought up a whole lot of really discussable issues, like GBLT parents, whether girls’ sports should remain just for girls, the differences in how girls and boys play sports, and the value of judicious trouble-making to create change—or at least dialogue about change. I liked Allie and Miles (though both seemed older than MS to me), and in a brief book, the author managed to get some character into the secondary characters as well. I also liked that while some of the book was entirely predictable—I knew Miles and Allie would become friends by the end—some of it was not. I didn’t know how the situation with the double teams would end, and thought that the author’s decision to uphold the girls-only status was interesting. I’m not a baseball fan, so I just have to assume the sports action was accurate. I thought a couple of things got dropped—like Allie’s weaving—and there was one time when the author mixed up the names of some secondary characters, but overall, a good book that veers away from the sports-series-entry norms.

[Emmalee Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads. I really enjoyed this book. It has a good plot line and it's short which is nice if you have a busy schedule. This book is about a girl named Allie who plays baseball. She is asked to pitch for the boys team and agrees. Then, her step brother Miles, decides that he wants to join the girls baseball team - which he isn't allowed to do (it's against the rules). This sparks up more controversy in the town (surrounding their family - Allie and Miles moms are together) and causes more strife between Allie and Miles. Also, as someone who knows nothing about sports, I was able to follow along with the book for the heavy focus on baseball. A very good book with a good plot line and message. I highly recommend this book - this would also be good for anyone looking for a sports book to give to any teenager (or 'tween'). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

[Danie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a book that was definitely written for its target audience, teens and young teens. The teen angst dripped off the page and there were the overblown storylines where everything is the end of the world in the book too. (And, I understand that's why they were written like that, because that's how most teens feel during those years, as if everything is the end of their worlds). Also, it's a brief read, with lots of stuff in a small package.

It's the story of Allie. She's a baseball pitcher on the girls baseball team in Juniper Bay, a very small town on the west coast of Canada, and she's a really good pitcher. Her Mom Suzanne also happens to have a girlfriend, Phyllis, who has a son close to Allie's age named Miles. So, at the same time that Allie's dealing with a lot of the town members looking at her weirdly because she has a lesbian Mom, she's also dealing with a new 'sort of brother' living in her house (And becoming the favorite of Allie's cat Patches). She then gets an opportunity to become a pitcher on a boy's baseball team, the Wolverines. It just happens that it's the same team that Miles is on. So, he winds up wanting to go take Allie's spot on the girl's baseball team, although the league doesn't really want to allow him to.

There's also the character of Eric, he's new in town so the reader can see things through his eyes, and he's probably the worst (as well as the fastest) player on the Wolverines.

The plot wasn't too surprising. Although, the whole Miles on the girls team ended in a way that I did not anticipate, so, there were some interesting surprises. And, there were some really interesting philosophical questions debated within the covers too. Just one example, why are girls allowed to play on the boys teams, but it seems like no one wants to let boys play on girls teams.

Honestly, the only big problem I really had with the book was with the character of Phyllis. I thought that the characterization just seemed totally off to me. I think her character was written the way that it was so that she'd be a 'unique' character, but I just read her character as sorta crazy.

But, hey, it was a story about a girl who got to play on the boys team (and did well), it has a couple of lesbian subplots in it, and it had a solid plot behind it. I would definitely recommend it to teens, but, it's simply a teen novel, not one of the 'crossover' novels like Harry Potter or the Hunger Games novels that have come out in the past few years.

I got this advanced galley through Netgalley on behalf of James Lorimer & Company hoping that I would review it. (Yeah, duh! Of course I would...)

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Two years ago, my dad moved out.Then a year ago, Mom started dating Miles’s mom, Phyllis, who lived in the next town over. One month ago, Phyllis moved in, bringing Miles with her to live in Juniper Bay. So you could say I’ve had three natural disasters in the last little while: an earthquake (the divorce), followed by a tsunami (mom dating a woman), followed by a flood of junk (Miles).

"It was a big deal in our small town when Mom and Phyllis started dating. Not that they held hands in public or anything, but the whispers — “pstpstpstlesbianspstpstpst” — were loud. Luckily, I’d already had practice ignoring strangers’ stares and the neighbours’ silence after Dad headed to Las Vegas with his dental hygienist..."

Double Play: A novel for youth about gender, baseball, and making friends with foisted-on-you family members.

[Benjamin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't really like this book as much I thought I would but it was still pretty good. This book was about a girl named Allie who played softball with her friends her whole life. But a couple years after her dad had left her and her mom, Allies mom got together with a women named Phyllis. Phyllis had a son named Miles. Allie and Miles didn't really get along that well, they pretty much hated each other. Allie got called up to be on the boys baseball team because their pitcher was hurt. But Miles didn't want Allie on his team so he wanted to be on the girls team. Bt the league wouldn't let him. So Miles has to cope with his sister and also to see if he can convince the league if he can join the girls team.

[Alivia A.]

The book Double Play was a good book, but it got boring at some parts. The book Double Play was written by Sara Cassidy. I would recommend this book if you like baseball/softball. At some parts it felt like it was dragged on. It also had some emotional moments. My favorite character is Allie Jenkinson because she’s likes softball. She learns how to deal with hard situations. My favorite quote is, “I always have loved you, and I will always will love you. Love lasts longer than sardines.” Said Allie. I liked this quote because she’s saying she will always love her cat. My least favorite character is Miles Kowalchuk because he’s not nice to Allie. He gave Batches, Allie’s cat sardines to make Batches like him more. In conclusion, this book is about all of the different relationships in her life. It was also about prejudice and how other people can judge other people.