Sandlot

by Alison Hendrie

Scotty Smalls, who has just moved into town with his mother and new stepfather, makes friends with a group of boys who have their own baseball team, even though he does not know how to play and has never heard of Babe Ruth

Genres: Sports

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

Reviews

[Benjamin Goldman]

"The Sandlot" is a coming-of-age film that came out in 1993 about a young group of boys who play baseball together. My chosen concept of perspective fits into this movie in how there are nine different characters on the baseball team. Middle school students can watch the film and analyze each character's perspective to infer how they might act in certain situations. The teacher could even have students pick a favorite character (secretly) and come up with a 30-second elevator speech to give in front of the class. The rest of the class would debate over which character the student was imitating. On the other hand, a strategy from Gallagher's "Write Like This" that middle school students could use with this movie is "iMAgiNiff." I would have students imagine/analyze how the story might be different if it was narrated by Mr. Mertle or even his dog (the Beast). What parts of the story would be changed, and why? This strategy is useful in its flexibility for students to make what they want of it. The students could also come up with their own "imagine if" sentence to build their own ideas off of.

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a cute little book that defines friendship. A new boy in town joins a daily baseball team of neighborhood boys. The story is endearing.