Children's Books discussion

Does baseball season count as a seasonal topic? I realized that my grandson and I have a LOT of baseball picture books. (He's a terrific first baseman.) Our books range from the spectacular We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball to a very quirky personal favorite, Roasted Peanuts by Tim Egan. Others we have are:

The Bat Boy And His Violin;

Across the Alley;

Campy: The Story of Roy Campanella;

Satchel Paige;

Luke Goes to Bat;

Hank Aaron: Brave in Every Way;

Zachary's Ball;

Michael's Golden Rules;

Out of the Ballpark;

Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth;

Teammates;

and I'm not even counting the Easy Readers or the books about how to play baseball! This should give me pause, but I'm waiting for the new book Clemente! coming out in May, about the great Roberto Clemente.

Does anyone else have any favorites? ( Yes, tragically, I only listed my favorites.)

The two that I can think of right away are:

Mama Played Baseball and

Dirt on Their Skirts: The Story of the Young Women who Won the World Championship.

Another one that looks great but that I haven't read is:

Catching the Moon: The Story of a Young Girl's Baseball Dream.

If this should go under themes, please go ahead and move it over!

Sure! I think this is a great seasonal topic! :-) Thanks for posting!!! I'm afraid I'm not a big baseball aficionado but Players in Pigtails is one to show women in baseball history and also gives a really interesting explanation of the song "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" I wasn't amazingly impressed with the storytelling or illustrations but I think it's still worthwhile for those interested in the subject.

For a fantasy children's novel, I really liked Summerland by Michael Chabon. His style, which I often have difficult with, worked perfectly in this book.

Or this one Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 illustrated, and some text added too, by Patricia Polacco.

Chandra, That's great about the violin studio students playing the national anthem!

That's so cute, Chandra! Yay for Izzy and her classmates.

I know is baseball seson I am playing it

"Baseball Saved Us" by Ken Mochizuki

Kirei wrote: ""Baseball Saved Us" by Ken Mochizuki"

That looks like a great one, Kirei!

Just Like Josh Gibson by Angela Johnson

Oh! And Take Me Out to the Ballgame! I like the version by Jack Norworth because it includes the verses and lots of fun information about the history of the song, but the history is included in such a way that you can ignore it if you want or read it. It's one of those books you can read just for the song (for younger kids, for example) or read with all the captions and side paragraphs for the history.

Another one (with a Japanese theme again!) is "Dear Ichiro". I've seen this at the library, but never read it....

Somehow I forgot about In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson. My daughter loved it when she was young and now my grandson loves it. Not to mention me.

Keeping Score is one that immediately comes to mind. I'll have to dig out the bibliography that I made for my library on the subject last year and add a few more soon.
In Keeping Score, the main character learns how to keep her own score card when watching baseball, and there are some resources at the back of the book if you want to learn how to do the same thing.

Baseball season has begun again (at least for my grandson, who just finished his basketball season last week!) Kathryn mentioned this thread over in the Picture Book group, and I wanted to mention that I recently received a copy of the picture book Clemente! by Willie Perdomo, illustrated by Bryan Collier. (Collier won the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award this year for Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave.) It's a beautiful book about a great ball player and a great humanitarian who was lost far too early. The book is written from the point of view of a boy who was named for Clemente. The book conveys not only the facts about Clemente, but how very much he was loved and respected both within and outside of the Latino community. I also like the occasional use of Spanish words in the text. A winner!

Sounds like a wonderful book. Thanks for helping to revive this thread, Wilhelmina! :-)