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SWINGING FOR THE FENCES

Name: SWINGING FOR THE FENCES
Author: Mike Leonetti
ISBN: 978-0-8118-5662-1

HANK AARON AND ME

by Mike Leonetti & illustrated by David Kim ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2008

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Mark always swings for the seats even when a single will help his team. His favorite player is Hank Aaron, who is closing in on Babe Ruth’s record of 714 career home runs. He’s even lucky enough to witness Aarons’s 700th home run and to meet him afterward. Hank kindly imparts some hitting advice, and later sends Mark a book about hitting. At the beginning of the next season, Aaron sets the new record and Mark is there to see it, too. Predictably, even as his hero makes history, his own hitting skills improve, and he becomes a better player. Leonetti sacrifices narrative ease to didacticism, causing Mark’s narration to be generally stilted and lifeless, the only slight exception being the description of Aaron’s record-breaking game. Kim’s bright, double-page spreads add some zest to the text. An afterword that provides biographical information about Aaron contains a puzzling error, stating that the Negro Leagues in 1951 were the only venue for African-American ballplayers even as it trumpets Jackie Robinson’s 1947 entry into the Major Leagues. Disappointing. (bibliography) (Picture book. 8-10)

Pub Date: April 1, 2008

ISBN: 978-0-8118-5662-1

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2008

Categories:

CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

- BOOK REVIEW
IN THE POCKET
by Mike Leonetti & illustrated by Chris O’Leary

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BACH'S BIG ADVENTURE

by Sallie Ketcham ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1999

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PLB 0-531-33140-7 Ketcham’s first book is based on an allegedly true story of a childhood incident in the life of Johann Sebastian Bach. It starts with a couple of pages regaling the Bach home and all the Johanns in the family, who made their fame through music. After his father’s death, Johann Sebastian goes to live with his brother, Johann Christoph, where he boasts that he is the best organist in the world. Johann Christoph contradicts him: “Old Adam Reincken is the best.” So Johann Sebastian sets out to hear the master himself. In fact, he is humbled to tears, but there is hope that he will be the world’s best organist one day. Johann Sebastian emerges as little more than a brat, Reincken as more of a suggestion than a character. Bush’s illustrations are most transporting when offering details of the landscape, but his protagonist is too impish to give the story much authority. (Picture book. 5-9)

Pub Date: March 1, 1999

ISBN: 0-531-30140-0

Page Count: 32

Publisher: Orchard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999

Categories:

CHILDREN'S HISTORICAL FICTION | CHILDREN'S ENTERTAINMENT & SPORTS

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THE BABE AND I

by David A. Adler ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 1999

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Adler (also with Widener, Lou Gehrig, 1997, etc.) sets his fictional story during the week of July 14, 1932, in the Bronx, when the news items that figure in this tale happened. A boy gets a dime for his birthday, instead of the bicycle he longs for, because it is the Great Depression, and everyone who lives in his neighborhood is poor. While helping his friend Jacob sell newspapers, he discovers that his own father, who leaves the house with a briefcase each day, is selling apples on Webster Avenue along with the other unemployed folk. Jacob takes the narrator to Yankee Stadium with the papers, and people don’t want to hear about the Coney Island fire or the boy who stole so he could get something to eat in jail. They want to hear about Babe Ruth and his 25th homer. As days pass, the narrator keeps selling papers, until the astonishing day when Ruth himself buys a paper from the boy with a five-dollar bill and tells him to keep the change. The acrylic paintings bask in the glow of a storied time, where even row houses and the elevated train have a warm, solid presence. The stadium and Webster Avenue are monuments of memory rather than reality in a style that echoes Thomas Hart Benton’s strong color and exaggerated figures. (Picture book. 5-9)