Immersive, though the pitch is definitely at browsing dippers and flippers.
A wide-ranging sampler of records, stats, stars, highlights, lowlights, sidelights, and general baseball talk.
Modeled on Gramling’s Football Fanbook (2017), the topical chapters each offer assortments of quick-fix descriptions or anecdotes interspersed with plenty of diagrams, spot art, and color photos of players in action. The target audience is hard to define, as readers are expected to know already about steroids, racism, the Dead Ball era, and the significance of an asterisk on a record such as the number of home runs in a season or career. Bafflingly, though, they’re assumed not to know what a “check swing” (sic) is, nor how to practice batting and catching alone at home. Still, along with major league team-by-team “Tidbits” and instructions for keeping score, there are instructions for shelling sunflower seeds with one’s teeth (the last demonstrated by a girl with brown skin and black braids). Likewise, a section pairing stars of the past and present offers intriguing comparisons; souvenir-ball and autograph seekers will find sensible advice; and hot-dog lovers will slaver over lovingly detailed descriptions of the toppings on, for instance, the classic “Dodger Dog” or the “Cracker Jack and Mac Dog” available at Pirates games.
Immersive, though the pitch is definitely at browsing dippers and flippers. (Nonfiction. 10-13)Pub Date: April 3, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68330-069-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Liberty Street/Time Inc. Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In no particular order and using no set criteria for his selections, veteran sportscaster Berman pays tribute to an arbitrary gallery of baseball stars—all familiar names and, except for the Yankees’ Alex Rodriguez, retired from play for decades. Repeatedly taking the stance that statistics are just numbers but then reeling off batting averages, home-run totals, wins (for pitchers) and other data as evidence of greatness, he offers career highlights in a folksy narrative surrounded by photos, side comments and baseball-card–style notes in side boxes. Readers had best come to this with some prior knowledge, since he casually drops terms like “slugging percentage,” “dead ball era” and “barnstorming” without explanation and also presents a notably superficial picture of baseball’s history—placing the sport’s “first half-century” almost entirely in the 1900s, for instance, and condescendingly noting that Jackie Robinson’s skill led Branch Rickey to decide that he “was worthy of becoming the first black player to play in the majors.” The awesome feats of Ruth, Mantle, the Gibsons Bob and Josh, Hank Aaron, Ty Cobb and the rest are always worth a recap—but this one’s strictly minor league. (Nonfiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4022-3886-4
Page Count: 138
Publisher: Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
In a helter-skelter scrapbook format, Cleare, a veteran mountaineer, profiles five of the world’s most renowned mountains—K2, the Eiger, the Matterhorn, Everest and Mount McKinley—and identifies some of the major historical expeditions to their summits. Top-to-bottom views of each peak are provided via single, double or (for Everest) wall-poster-sized triple foldouts. Along with those, dozens of smaller captioned photos, maps, images or realistic reconstructions depict noted climbers of the past, local wildlife, old- and new-style climbing gear, wind and weather patterns, climbers’ camps, glaciers and rugged landscapes. Likewise, each peak receives an introductory passage of dramatic prose (“Mount McKinley is a colossal, icy complex of ridges, spurs, buttresses, and hanging glaciers,” forming “a crucible of particularly evil weather”). This is accompanied by assemblages of captions and commentary in smaller type that detail its challenges and the often-unhappy history of climbers who faced them. The level of detail is specific enough to include views and comparisons of the actual routes up each mountain, and readers are expected to be clear on the difference between a cirque and a serac, or a “technical” and a “nontechnical” climb. Armchair climbers who can weather the random-feeling arrangement of pictures and the overall absence of narrative flow are in for thrills. (Informational browsing item. 11-13)
Pub Date: May 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7534-6573-8
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Kingfisher
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2011
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