A notably inclusive look at the great American pastime, let down by inelegant text.
A rhyming primer on baseball history, mashed up with the classic song.
Set against abstract backdrops of storied ballfields over the decades, stylized illustrations feature players striking dynamic poses as they pitch, bat, and slide. Beginning in the 1920s, the rhyming text breezes through milestones and big names in baseball, including Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier and the sport’s growing popularity in Latin America and Asia. This macro-level view compresses onto a single page the wartime All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which didn’t accept Black women, and the few female players in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s; readers will need to pay careful attention to the backmatter to parse this era. The vibrant illustrations evoke the excitement of a sporting audience, though fans may deflate upon reading the book aloud. The text repeats the lyrics of the traditional ballpark ditty twice, but neither the meter nor the rhyme scheme of the new copy conforms to the song’s pattern, leaving readers caught between multiple scansions. Backmatter includes a QR code linked to an audio singalong, a timeline, a basic explanation of the game, instructions for playing catch, and brief biographies of 10 significant players, such as Jim Abbott, born without a right hand, who pitched a no-hitter in 1993. The fans and players depicted are racially diverse.
A notably inclusive look at the great American pastime, let down by inelegant text. (Informational picture book. 5-9)Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9798888593707
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Barefoot Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses.
An NBA star pays tribute to the influence of his grandfather.
In the same vein as his Long Shot (2009), illustrated by Frank Morrison, this latest from Paul prioritizes values and character: “My granddad Papa Chilly had dreams that came true,” he writes, “so maybe if I listen and watch him, / mine will too.” So it is that the wide-eyed Black child in the simply drawn illustrations rises early to get to the playground hoops before anyone else, watches his elder working hard and respecting others, hears him cheering along with the rest of the family from the stands during games, and recalls in a prose afterword that his grandfather wasn’t one to lecture but taught by example. Paul mentions in both the text and the backmatter that Papa Chilly was the first African American to own a service station in North Carolina (his presumed dream) but not that he was killed in a robbery, which has the effect of keeping the overall tone positive and the instructional content one-dimensional. Figures in the pictures are mostly dark-skinned. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Blandly inspirational fare made to evoke equally shrink-wrapped responses. (Picture book. 6-8)Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2023
ISBN: 978-1-250-81003-8
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
Blandly laudatory.
The iconic animator introduces young readers to each “happy place” in his life.
The tally begins with his childhood home in Marceline, Missouri, and climaxes with Disneyland (carefully designed to be “the happiest place on Earth”), but the account really centers on finding his true happy place, not on a map but in drawing. In sketching out his early flubs and later rocket to the top, the fictive narrator gives Ub Iwerks and other Disney studio workers a nod (leaving his labor disputes with them unmentioned) and squeezes in quick references to his animated films, from Steamboat Willie to Winnie the Pooh (sans Fantasia and Song of the South). Eliopoulos incorporates stills from the films into his cartoon illustrations and, characteristically for this series, depicts Disney as a caricature, trademark mustache in place on outsized head even in childhood years and child sized even as an adult. Human figures default to white, with occasional people of color in crowd scenes and (ahistorically) in the animation studio. One unidentified animator builds up the role-modeling with an observation that Walt and Mickey were really the same (“Both fearless; both resourceful”). An assertion toward the end—“So when do you stop being a child? When you stop dreaming”—muddles the overall follow-your-bliss message. A timeline to the EPCOT Center’s 1982 opening offers photos of the man with select associates, rodent and otherwise. An additional series entry, I Am Marie Curie, publishes simultaneously, featuring a gowned, toddler-sized version of the groundbreaking physicist accepting her two Nobel prizes.
Blandly laudatory. (bibliography) (Picture book/biography. 6-8)Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7352-2875-7
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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