America's Pastime: Baseball Read-Alouds from the '07 Season
Judy Freeman -- School Library Journal, 8/23/2007
He's back for another swing at the old ball game. Who? Casey, of course, in Dan Gutman's droll narrative poem book, Casey Back at Bat (HarperCollins, 2007; Gr K–8). In this new encounter with baseball's legendary blunderhead, it’s the last game of the season, and with Mudville tied for first, it's once again up to Casey to hit in the clutch. Will he blow it this time, too?
Not only is this picture book an homage to Ernest Lawrence Thayer's classic poem, "Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888," it's an around-the-world travelogue, and packs in a tall tale pourquoi element, too. Casey gives that ball such a mighty whack, it flies out of the stadium and across the Atlantic Ocean. The towering drive hits a certain building in Pisa, sending it sideways, knocks the nose off the Sphinx, races back through time to scare off the dinosaurs, and careens into outer space. No routine pop-up, this.
With your listeners, trace the ball's trajectory on a globe. Have them speculate about and then write and illustrate new verses describing other landmarks that the ball might have affected. Artists can emulate the style of Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher's striking and comical old-timey collage illustrations; take notice that the players' uniforms are created from strips of vintage newspapers.
Pull out the sports section of your local newspaper to investigate how sporting events are described. Children can rewrite the story as game coverage, do a feature article about Mudville’s season, or write a profile on supercilious athlete Casey.
What about the other Casey?; the girl from Jack Norworth’s 1908 baseball anthem, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," which starts, "Katie Casey was baseball mad/Had the fever and had it bad." You can find the complete song on the endpapers of Shana Corey’s Players in Pigtails (Scholastic, 2003; Gr 1–5), illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon, a fictional picture book about Katie Casey and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940s. Find the words, sheet music, and audio of the tune at sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiTAKEBALL;ttTAKEBALL.html so you can all sing it together.
Next, segue into a profusion of fascinating baseball facts with Sally Cook and James Charlton's Hey Batta Batta Swing!: The Wild Old Days of Baseball (S & S, 2007; Gr 1–8). Learn how teams developed their names, put numbers on their uniforms, gave nicknames to their players, and dealt with cheating on the field. Do you know what a “dinger,” an “Uncle Charlie,” or “a can of corn” is? Instead of the definitions being hidden in a glossary at the back, you'll find each colorful baseball colloquialism defined in the page's margins. Think vocabulary lesson here. (Answer: a home run, a curveball, and an easy fly ball.) Ross MacDonald takes the lively text and knocks it out of the box with his lighthearted watercolor and pencil-crayon cartoon-style illustrations, infused with sunny yellow highlights.
By the time the World Series is upon us, your students will be scanning the shelves for more books on the sport. You’ll hit a line drive if you introduce any or all of these fabulous new picture-book biographies about baseball icons:
ADLER, David A. Campy: The Story of Roy Campanella. illus. by Gordon C. James. Viking. 2007. Gr 2-6.
ADLER, David A. Satchel Paige: Don't Look Back. illus. by Terry Widener. Harcourt. 2007. Gr 2-6.
BURLEIGH, Robert. Stealing Home: Jackie Robinson Against the Odds. illus. by Mike Wimmer. S & S. 2007. Gr 3-8.
RIPKEN, Carl, Jr. The Longest Season: The Story of the Orioles' 1988 Losing Streak.illus. by Ron Mazellan. Philomel. 2007. Gr 2-6.
WISE, Bill. Louis Sockalexis: Native American Baseball Pioneer.illus. by Bill Farnsworth. Lee & Low. 2007. Gr 2-6.
And finally, blow off some steam. Go out and play some ball.
JUDY FREEMAN (www.JudyReadsBooks.com), children's literature consultant and presenter, is the author of Books Kids Will Sit Still For 3 (Libraries Unlimited, 2006).
