You Throw Like a Girl

by Rachele Alpine

Miss Congeniality meets She’s the Man in this hilarious M!X novel about a girl torn between competing in a beauty pageant and playing on the boy’s baseball team.

Gabby’s summer vacation isn’t shaping up to be that great. Her dad was just deployed overseas, and Gabby is staying at her grandmother’s house with her mom and baby sister until he returns.

The one bright spot is that Gaby plans to sign up for the local softball league—her greatest love and a passion she shares with her Dad who was a pitcher in college. But when Gabby goes to sign up for the summer league, she discovers that there wasn’t enough interest to justify a girl’s team this year. And to top it off, a horrible miscommunication ends with Gabby signed up to participate in the Miss Popcorn Festival—the annual pageant that Gabby’s mom dominated when she was younger.

Besides not having any interest in the pageant life, Gabby made a promise to her dad that she would play softball for the summer. Since her pitching skills rival any boy her age, Gabby creates a master disguise herself as a boy and sign up for the boy’s baseball team instead—and try to win the pageant to make Mom happy. Can Gabby juggle perfecting her pageant walk and perfecting her fastball? Or will this plan strike out?

Genres: Sports, Middle Grade, Realistic Fiction, Humor, Childrens, Baseball, Young Adult

257 pages, Paperback

First published February 14, 2017

About the author

Rachele Alpine is a lover of binge watching reality TV, dogs, knitting, gummy peaches, and lots and lots of coffee!

One of her first jobs was at a library, but it didn't last long, because all she did was hide in the third-floor stacks and read. Now she's a little more careful about when and where she indulges her reading habit.

By day she's a high school English teacher, by night she's a mom and wife, and she writes during any time she can find in between!

Rachele lives with her husband and son in Cleveland, Ohio, but dreams of moving back to Boston, the city she fell in love with while attending graduate school there.

Reviews

[Janete on hiatus due health issues]

DNFed. As I read the first chapters , I find out that a stupid mother of a 12 y.o. girl wants that her daughter sign up to a beauty contest anyway and against the girl's will. As I am against these beauty contests, I decided to give up this book.

[maya venice · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.25 or 3.5 ⭐️

[Rachele Alpine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote the book, so of course I love it! And I hope you do too! Happy reading! : )

[Grace Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachele Alpine this is a great book you got me entertained every time I took it out and read it I was blown away. Me and my mom read this together I made it a race (because we always make things a race) I won it. I am looking foward to reading operation pucer up!👧Gabby 👩‍🎨 Rachele Alpine 👧Grace (the girl from operation puker up) .🌹😄♥️.

[Becky Ginther · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this to prep for a book discussion we are hosting at the library for a Girl Scout troop. My overall impressions after finishing it were that it had some good lessons and themes for kids (especially girls) but the story itself was a bit cliche and hit you over the head with the message.

Gabby has always loved softball and is looking forward to playing this summer. She especially wants to make her dad proud, who is overseas with the military. However, due to a beauty pageant happening that summer the softball team is cancelled since not enough girls are interested. And Gabby accidentally gets signed up for the pageant, which thrills her mom. There's no way she's not playing ball though - so she comes up with the idea to disguise herself as a boy and join the baseball team. But with so many lies going on can Gabby keep track of everything?

I will admit that this book rubbed me the wrong way in the beginning. Gabby clearly has no interest in pageants. She agrees to do it anyway because she knows it makes her mom happy. That's an incredibly mature thing for anyone to do, much less a 12 year old. And although she realizes it's wrong in the end, her mom tries to turn her into someone that she's not - drinking green smoothies and going for a run every morning to get in "pageant shape." If Gabby had some interest it would have been different, but it was a real turn off for me to read about a parent doing this to a kid who just wanted to play sports. I think it would have worked a bit better if Gabby had at least a slight interest in pageants. In fact, I think it would be pretty cool to see a female with interest in both. Too often girls are portrayed as either being one or the other. That is one thing I did appreciate about this book - by the end Gabby didn't hate the pageant, but still loved ball too.

And the whole concept of having to dress as a boy to play baseball seems a bit dated to me. To be fair, in the end they explain to her she would have been allowed to play from the beginning as herself - there are no rules stopping a girl from playing on the team. But it seemed a stretch to me to think that ALL the girls who played softball in past summers would now be interested in the pageant. And then there's the typical mean girl who tries to sabotage the other pageant contestants. Like I said, it just felt like a lot of cliches.

But that being said, I liked Gabby as a character. And she had some strong things to share with girls. Things like “’Cute’ wasn’t exactly the word I wanted people to use to describe me. I’d rather be athletic, tough, or strong.” The ending ties up neatly with everyone realizing their mistakes, forgiving each other, and learning to see things from someone else's point of view. So if you're looking for a wholesome story that teaches a good lesson, this is a good choice. I'll be curious to see what the girls think of it.

[Carolyn Deas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I may be biased because I know the author, but this book blew me away. Not only is it about baseball (one of my true loves), but it's about a girl beating the odds (and the boys) and a sport that she loves.

Gabby is spending the summer in Chester, Ohio. He father was just deployed and she's having a hard time adjusting. She left behind her friends and her softball team but she's hoping that playing for Chester's team will make things better. She promised her dad she would pitch in the Championship game, just like he did when he was a kid.

Unfortunately, she finds out that there aren't enough girls to participate in softball this season because everyone in town seems to be part of the Miss Popcorn Pageant. She leaves the rec center defeated.

By a twist of fate, Gabby's mom signs her up for the pageant. She is a legacy in town because she won the crown several years. Gabby's mom is so excited about the pageant that Gabby can't bear to squash her dreams of a daughter following in her footsteps.

Grace and composure are not something Gabby thinks herself to be good at, but this summer will test her in more ways than one. Refusing to go back on her promise to her dad, Gabby signs up for the Chester baseball team. Unsure of the rules, she disguises herself as "Johnny" and blows the boys out of the water with her arm.

Juggling these two new personas (beauty queen and a boy) gets out of hand and her friendships are in trouble because of her lies.

Can she make her mom and her dad proud?

Most important, can she pull it off?

[Mary Elizabeth Morton · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet and delightful read. I read this book along with my 8 year old daughter in a fun competition read. She won the competition, reading the book one day quicker than me. Way to go Gracie! We are excitedly looking forward to reading another book by Rachele Alpine called "Operation Pucker Up". Fun times!

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this book! Great for middle school.

[Mrs. Gadsden LA Class · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alex Schwartz- This book is one of the best books I've ever read! It is showing you to always believe in your dreams, even if they go the wrong way. I would definitely recommend this book.

[Stephanie Faris · Rating 5 out of 5]

You Throw Like a Girl tackles the pressure young girls feel to fit a certain "type." Gabby has a mom who was a former beauty queen and a dad who was a local baseball legend. Gabby gravitated toward her father's pastime, taking up softball. But when her dad leaves the country and she heads to her grandmother's house for the summer, she finds herself pushed into the pageant world while also pretending to be a boy to get onto the only youth softball team in town. I had so much fun reading this book, but I also think it has a great message for young girls who might not be sure where they fit in the whole tomboy vs. girly-girl scheme of things.

[Hollowspine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gabby loves playing softball, especially playing as the pitcher and following in her dad's shoes, but when she ends up having to spend the summer at her grandma's house her summer plans are ruined. Not only is she too far away to play with her friends, there isn't even a team in her grandma's town. Instead, all the girls are signing up for the Miss Popcorn pageant. Yuck.

When Gabby decides to play for the boys team...and sign up for Miss Popcorn to make her mom happy, she ends up in a tangled web of lies and hard work. Who knew it took so much training to be in a beauty pageant! Gabby doesn't want to disappoint her mom, but she's just no good at these "girly" things and she also definitely doesn't want to let her dad down either, so she has to throw the winning pitch in the championship game for him! So that means that she has to keep up her boy persona to stay on the team, but also perform well in the pageant to make her mom proud, but how can she balance all that...especially while wearing heels!?

Through the book Gabby makes new friends, learns to confront bullies, and also connects with her mom in a new way. Sure, Gabby may not be interested in wearing dresses and makeup, but she learns that wearing dresses and makeup doesn't disqualify girls from playing baseball, being strong and having interests beyond makeovers and manicures. She also schools the boys in learning that gender does not determine athletic ability (YES!).

Although I liked that Gabby does make new friends, both guys and girls, I wish that the author had gone a different and more original route with her bully, a typical pretty rich mean girl. We can definitely see that Jenna, the mean girl, is trying to live up to the high expectations of her mom, but we never got to see Jenna and Gabby interact in a different way from the trope of the MC and the mean girl.

[Terri · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was recommended to me for teaching body positivity and promoting self confidence. That part is important because if I hadn't expected those key aspects to be present in this book, I likely would have enjoyed it more.

My 10 yo daughter and I decided to read this book together as a bedtime read aloud. It started ok, but I noticed I had to change some terminology a bit more frequently that I would have liked. An example would be changing language of how the character views her body...or skipping sentences entirely. We made it to the 7th chapter, when upon completion of that chapter I was prompted to ask "are you really enjoying this?" What prompted me asking was the lead character describing herself as "pretty decent looking", "pretty enough" etc. ?! (I did skip those words.) My daughter's response was "no, I hate it. It sounds like the mother is a terrible person and is blind to what her daughter really loves."

So here's the deal with this book: in the end I suspect this girl discovers she can enjoy girly stuff and sports (though why make sports NOT a girly venture anyway? That already seems so sexist.) And I suspect the mom discovers that pushing beauty pageants on her sports loving daughter is an uncool thing to do. And everyone lives happily ever after. But getting to that point is a laundry list of sexist catch phrases that we were long ago taught not to say to our daughter or to ourselves. It puts thoughts into young readers minds that maybe they should be questioning their looks or their body shapes or their hobbies and whether or not they are "enough" to appease their parents. I considered tossing this book into my donate pile but my daughter put it into recycling instead.

[Valerie McEnroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book for the less bookish crowd. Kids who love realistic fiction they can relate to without all the literary language. Gabby loves softball more than anything. She's not thrilled to be spending the summer at her grandma's house, but at least she'll be able to play on the rec softball team. Or so she thought. Turns out, there aren't enough girls to form a softball team because they've all decided to participate in the local beauty pageant. Gabby's mom is a pageant legend and would love for Gabby to follow in her footsteps. Gabby can barely stand the thought, but she wants to make her mom happy, especially with her dad deployed overseas for a year.

Gabby and her dad love the Cleveland Indians. Baseball. Softball. Everything that includes a ball and bat. Without a softball team, she decides to pose as a boy and tryout for baseball. She not only makes the team, she's selected to be the starting pitcher. Keeping her two personas separate ends up being a complicated task accomplished only through layers of lies. There's only one thing to do. Come clean.

Cute book about being true to yourself. Love the sports bonding between Gabby and her dad. Glad her mom came around in the end. Gotta have the jealous, mean girl. Cliched, but effective.

[Ximena De Leon]

Hola, quiero recomendar el libro you throw like a girl. En la primera parte: La mamá de la niña llamó a las chicas de el verano. Entonces la niña dice que le dice el verano sin papá. Y luego dice por qué pudo ser esto cuando estuve atrapada en un automóvil durante 8 horas. Y ella le envió un mensaje de texto a su padre y le dijo que regresara, y él le respondió, ojalá pudiera. Luego llegaron a la frontera de Indiana y pasaron un canto gigante que proclamó a Ohio como el corazón de todo. En la segunda parte: Ella se enamoró de un chico. Después le dijo sal de ahí y salió. Después le dio nostalgia.y tenían dos problemas muy complicados. En la tercera parte: Ella recogió la última pelota y la lanzó. La logró tirar como le había prometido a su papá. Pero después se recordó porque se lo prometió. Después se recordó que tenían una competencia. Después hablo enfrente de miles de personas. Así que si te pareció chilero leelo. El plot me gustó porque no me esperaba que cabl cuando se fueran fuera la competencia de base ball de la niña. El libro me enseño a no redirme porque la niña no se rindio y hico otro campionato en otro pais. Yo se lo recomiendo a Julia porque siento que este libro es su estilo.

[Angela · Rating 2 out of 5]

My daughter really liked this one. She's a softball player as well, and loves dresses and fashion. This really appealed to both aspects of her personality!

I'm a bit of a tough nut to crack these days. I had wanted there to be a bit more conflict with the boy that she had befriended as "Johnny" (I should really write these reviews right away, I think the boy's name was Owen). I wanted him to be more upset about the deceit (Was everything about our friendship a lie?!). I had also not been 100% happy about the characterization of the boys in general. Like all they did was hit each other and toot or whatever?? Another thing that turned me off was when she went to the pizza party with the team and lied about playing video games. I mean, it just made it sound like girls aren't interested in gaming, which turned me off personally.

There were some great things in there as well. I was really concerned when her father didn't call back and liked the relationship with her mother. I liked the friendships she mended and how she mended them.

All said and done, it's a good read. It does all the things that a well written book should do. It just wasn't for me, personally.

[Marines Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

A summary of the story is that a girl named Gabby has to go and live with her grandma in the summer because his dad has to travel overseas for work reasons. So Gabby and her mom and sister hit the road until they get to grandma's house. Gabby is pretty happy and sad she is happy because she knows that she will get to play baseball the bad thing is that she will need to disguise as a boy because there in no girls team in that town but she will still play just like she promised his dad but her mom wants her to participate on one of the pageants that she participated in when she was little so she is going to participate on a pageant while playing for a boys team. The characters did not change a lot during the story. I think that they were the same throughout the whole story. I think the book did not change me but it did teach me that girls can like “boy” things and boys can like “girl” things. I think I would recommend it to Julia because I feel she likes this type of books.

[Tory Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Throw Like A Girl by Rachele Alpine will appeal to many young girls. Gabby and her father have been playing baseball together since she was very young. Now he is deployed overseas and she must survive the summer without him. She has been looking forward to playing on the girl's softball league, but this year the games are cancelled so that local girls can participate in the Miss Popcorn pageant. Her mother, a 3 time winner of the pageant, is eager to assist her with pageant preparations, but Gabby has also secretly joined a boys baseball team as the starting pitcher. All of this results in an amazing but confusing summer.

[Falker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this title with my 6 year old daughter, who is pretty "girly" in that she loves to dress up, wear makeup, the whole thing, but also loves to play baseball, so I thought this book would be great for us to read together.

I liked it a lot, so did she. It was a fun journey, with some twists and turns here and there, and comes to a nice satisfying conclusion, leaving just a little for the imagination.

In browsing some of these other reviews, I find it funny that the people hating on this book and it's author for the "sexist" tropes, or the gender roles talks, didn't bother to actually finish the book. So silly.

Well done, and I look forward to reading more.

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a hit in my household! It was such a fun Mommy-and-daughter adventure. I read it aloud to my kindergartner, and every night at lights out she would plead with me "just one more chapter, please??" The main character Gabby is fun and entertaining, we both enjoyed the plot. As a parent, I really appreciated the lessons taught...finding strength during sad times (Gabby's father was serving overseas), family loyalty, importance of honesty, how to resolve peer conflict. My 6-year-old and I both give this middle grade novel 5 stars!

[Katharine Ott · Rating 3 out of 5]

"You Throw Like a Girl" - written by Rachele Alpine and published in 2017 by Aladdin, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division. This middle-grade novel is aimed squarely at young girls around middle school age and I imagine they would enjoy it much more than I did. Gabby, a baseball-loving tomboy, spends the summer at her grandmother's home where she has to juggle playing her favorite game and also competing in the Miss Popcorn Pageant. To accomplish the former, she disguises herself by putting her hair up under her hat and calling herself Johnny, while she fusses and fumes about her dress, her looks and her talent in the pageant which her mother won three straight years. "I wouldn't mind asking Erin for some tips on how to look cute..." The language seems dumbed-down, many of those readers are pretty sophisticated, while the ending neatly solves all her problems. The Cleveland Indians shout-outs were fun.

[Sherry Scheline · Rating 5 out of 5]

I started this book a few weeks ago because I was testing out SORA an online book 📖 app that links to the library’s Libby Service. I got to busy and didn’t finish reading this title. I was riding with my family up to Spokane this weekend to see my spunky little niece Hayven and decided to finish this delightful little book. I was absolutely delighted. I encouraged my niece to read it and I will encourage others to as well. Perfect inspirational read for middle readers. It reminds us how easy it is to tell a lie, but how hard it is to keep it from unraveling. Excellent book.

[Randy Tramp · Rating 5 out of 5]

My son, Aaron, brought this book home for me to read. As I got into it, I found I loved the book.

Gabby wants to play softball but the girls don't have a team. So she joins the boy's baseball team. Only they don't know she's a girl. (Great lesson.)

Gabby's dad is deployed. She misses him. I love this part of the story, and couldn't help but shed a few tears.

I enjoyed this story and would recommend it to any elementary student.

[Grace W · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute enough for a middle grade book. I certainly do need more books about girls playing sports. Just found it a bit.... predictable. Which yes I KNOW it's a kids book. But I'm reading this in the middle of a reading slump of underwhelming books and I was just hoping to be more in love with this than I was.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cute. Gabby pretends to be a boy to play on the summer rec team. Meanwhile, her mom wants her to be in the local beauty pageant. Gabby agrees just to make her mom happy and distracted while her dad is overseas.
Decent book about family, telling the truth, and how difficult it can be to stand up for what you think is the right thing to do.

[Tannie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is so cute! I read it with Deirdre for Mother/Daughter Book Club. She enjoyed it so much and we laughed a lot reading it. Claire heard us reading it and asked for us to finish it quickly so she could read it before we had book club and had to return it. It's a great story about friendship, being who you are, supporting your family, and being a honest.

[Jnase1 · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

I’m a little conflicted because I wanted to like it more, but can’t get past the stereotyping of boys when the point of the book was fighting the stereotyping of girls. Not a bad read, but seemed a little hypocritical.

[Lindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

So good! I read this with my 7 year old daughter we both enjoyed it! The proud parent moments made me mushy. And she was worried about Gabby and Owen catching feelings. (Spoiler: They don't. Phew!) My daughter is calling for a sequel because she's dying to know how the Championship game ends!!

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun summer read that made me wish for the days of softball games and hanging out with friends. Also, it makes readers consider what being true to yourself really means.

[Faye Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

👍🏻

[Syan P8 · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love baseball and soccer so when I saw this book I knew i needed a reason to fight against it