BASEBALL BUDDIES

In Derr’s illustrated middle-grade novella, a boy must learn how to become a leader.

Eleven-year-old Luis is close friends with the kids on his coed baseball team, the McIntyre Manatees—but that hasn’t always been the case. In this book, he and his friends relive what happened when they first met a year ago, when Luis moved to Ohio from Texas. His parents encouraged him to join the local baseball team to ground him in familiar habits after the upheaval of a big move. He was new to the well-established Manatees and was shocked when the new coach picked him to be captain over kids who’d been on the team longer, and his teammates were similarly surprised. Only soft-spoken catcher Gary seemed to be on his side when he took up his position, and the hardest player to get along with was first baseman Jimmie, the biggest, strongest, and meanest kid on the team. As Luis and his teammates played through the season, they realized that winning games isn’t just about skill—it’s also about being able to work together. Readers follow Luis as he learns leadership skills in a smooth, well-paced narrative that models good communication and perseverance. They’ll find themselves rooting for the Manatees as the story builds and playoffs approach. A major letdown, though, is that Derr has players recounting playoff highlights after the fact rather than allowing readers to experience the game as it occurs. He also frames the novel as the story of Luis and Jimmie’s learning to become friends, which feels discordant at the end, when greater emphasis is on Luis’ growth as team captain. However, these aspects don’t spoil the joy of the story or the portrayal of the characters’ clear love for sports, which are evident in the text and grayscale line drawings by LaCoste, which are cartoonlike and expressive; characters are depicted with an array of skin tones.

A wonderful narrative for readers who love baseball that also offers valuable lessons to those who don’t.