Thirteen-year-old Matt, from a large, noisy, loving family, faces the cancer of his beloved 19-year-old brother Tom. But this is also a baseball story, and Zinnen writes about baseball, as she does about families and illness, with astonishing and lyrical precision. Matt and his mom are housesitting near the hospital where Tom is having last-ditch radiation; his father and the gaggle of younger children are at home. Matt left his middle-school team, where he’s a hero of sorts in both batting and fielding, and is enlisted by his new school, a sorry fourth place in the league. Zinnen does not prettify Tom’s desperate straits or his family’s reaction when he sneaks out of the hospital to marry his girlfriend. Nor does she gloss over Matt’s emotional struggles with a new school, a new team, and the insistent drumbeat of Tom’s deterioration. A note of hope, and sunlight, at the end will satisfy readers, who should be sure to keep the hankies handy. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-525-47163-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
An agreeable rhyming counting book with a baseball theme. The story opens on a little league field where the Blue Sox and the Stars face off: “Come play baseball/You could be a hero./The game’s starting score/is zero to zero.” The teams of boys and girls run up the numbers to 20, and baseball rules and lore are imparted painlessly: “When there’s a full count, we say, ‘Three and two.’/Five fingers up! His turn’s almost through.” A grand slam ends the game, with 19 ice cream cones and 20 baseball cards that give a clear and accurate summary of the main rules of the game. Shaw’s stocky acrylic-on-board figures have less zest than his beautifully rendered bats and balls, lush green field and blue sky, and a friendly, ice-cream-loving dog. Younger children whose radar may have picked up McGwire and Sosa, Piazza and Brosius will be ready for spring training after this one. (Picture book. 3-7)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-88106-332-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Charlesbridge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1999
In this sequel to Miranda and the Movies (1989), Miranda Gaines and her Aunt Lucy travel by train to Hollywood to join up with and Bobby, streetwise orphaned young actor who is Miranda’s best friend, and C.J., the charming if rascally director of silent movies in which Miranda hopes to act. Upon arrival, Lucy sorts out C.J.’s disastrous financial mess while Miranda and Bobby star in a series of low-budget westerns, and get bit parts in epochal movies such as D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance. Headstrong young heroine! Charming rogue! Plucky orphan! With its careening plot, overblown descriptive passages, and larger-than-life characters, this novel is similar to the overlong melodramas Miranda finds under production in Hollywood. But if much of the humor is over the heads of the target audience, and if too much movie jargon remains oblique, this broad, entertaining period piece carries readers along with its sheer good spirits and provides them with a vivid glimpse of an unfamiliar era. (Fiction. 10-12)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-15-202059-4
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1999
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