BATTER UP WOMBAT

“The Champs weren’t,” writes Lester, introducing Munsinger’s hairy, delightful baseballers. Concisely so, but only from the vantage point of runs scored. Into their unsuspecting, winless ranks marches a hairy, delightful wombat (a sturdily built Australian marsupial, for those as clueless about wombats as this wombat is about baseball). The sport may bewilder the wombat, but the Champs think his name is powerfully suggestive—“Wham! Bat!”—and the wombat is tickled by baseball’s allusive jargon, literally interpreting such items as “a pitcher stands on a mound,” “the catcher wears a mask” and, best of all, “the hitter hits a foul,” with the image coming to his mind of a chicken getting clobbered by a boxing glove. While the wombat doesn’t deliver the big hits the Champs expected, he does dig them a storm cellar into which they retreat (it seems the Champs are forever retreating into one cellar or another) when a tornado invades their playing field. Comically absurd wordplay and Munsinger’s typically goofy art make this an unbeatable combination. (Picture book. 4-8)