THE SUPER SLUGGERS

Eleven-year-old Banjo Hit Bishbash is known to his friends around town as Walloper (short for the “Great Walloper”) for his batting prowess. But when a hitting slump arrives within sight of the end of a hard-fought season, it settles over his head as a visible, tangible black cloud. A determined 11-year-old sportswriter for the local paper seems to have unintentionally jinxed Walloper with her predictions of home-run success. At the same time, a seemingly endless summer heat wave has all but drained the energy from the Rambletown Rounders. While the resolution to Walloper’s predicament is never in doubt, it is still nevertheless happily satisfying. Markey’s deadpan delivery renders his tall-tale names and broad, punning prose quite comical, and the Walloper’s triumphant out-of-the-park home run is the stuff of minor legend. (Fiction. 8-12)