The Aurora County All-Stars

Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA -- School Library Journal, 10/22/2007

From SLJ October 2007

WILES, Deborah. The Aurora County All-Stars. 242p. map. reprods. Harcourt. 2007. Tr $16. ISBN 978-0-15-206068-8. LC 2006102551.

Gr 5-9–Wiles revisits the rural Mississippi setting of Love, Ruby Lavender (2001) and Each Little Bird That Sings (2005, both Harcourt). House Jackson, 12, lives to pitch and still mourns the death of his mother six years earlier. “Swallow your toads early in the day,” she would say. Now, House’s “toads” include the death of a mysterious 88-year-old neighbor, the town’s bicentennial pageant, and, worst of all, Frances Shotz. The previous summer, a collision with the 14-year-old left House with a broken elbow and canceled his baseball season. Frances, who styles herself Finesse and flavors her speech with French, is the artistic director of the pageant, which threatens to cancel his team’s annual July Fourth game. House sorts his way through a thicket of problems while surrounded by colorful characters, many from the earlier books (Ruby has a key role). There’s a graceful air of nostalgia as children scuff along dusty roads, trailed by an old dog named Eudora Welty. Wiles’s prose is keenly observant and not to be read hurriedly. This is a slow-simmering stew of friendship and betrayal, family love and loyalty, and finding oneself. At times, it threatens to get out of hand, but the author keeps things in check with down-home humor. In this moving homage to the power of words, House eventually finds a way to resolve his problems in the stirring example of his baseball hero, Sandy Koufax; Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; and his mother’s voice reminding him to “listen for the symphony true.”

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