It is not that I have anything against sports. It is just not my thing. I really have no interest. I might have mentioned that there are three baseball stories among the twenty Caudill nominees for 2012. Actually, there might be more. Who knows? They might have snuck one in. But three, 3, three book covers feature a baseball. And this is the third one.
The first book was set following the Great Depression and World War II and featured a baseball-loving boy who loses his left arm. He learns to pitch and pitch well without it.
The second book was set following the Vietnam War and featured a Vietnamese boy adopted by an American family. The American father teaches the boy the great American past time. He also piteches. The book features a Vietnam vet amputee as well who ends up coaching the team.
This third book is contemporary realistic fiction which means it could be occuring in modern time. Something new – the main character is a girl whose father taught her the game he loved. And he taught her how to pitch. And he gave her a secret weapon – a knuckleball which is also known as a butterfly because of the way that it floats and flitters rather than spins. This book did not disappoint me. In the final chapter, it does mention another baseball player who lost a leg due to a hunting accident and still managed to pitch despite the amputation.
I am beginning to wonder if someone on the nominating committee is a baseball-loving, pitching, amputee.
Not that I have anything against amputees either. Joking, of course.
I would recommend this book to girl athletes from 4th to 8th grade. Girls perhaps who realize that they have just as much to offer as boys.
Joking aside… This is a book about Molly Williams, an eighth grade girl who loves baseball. She has always played on the girls' softball team, but what she really wants might be something a little harder to get. She wants to be on a baseball team. It just so happens that they tend to be "boys'" baseball teams.
Molly Williams is also suffering from a kind of amputation. Six months ago, her father was killed in a single car accident on his way home from work. She was very much a daddy's girl. Now both she and her mother are hurting and they are having trouble dealing with their loss separately. But they really don't know how to talk to each other. Her mother would be considered a girlie girl. Molly is not fashionable. She is an athlete and is comfortable in her team uniform.
And in the end, despite the sports theme, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and know a heck of a lot more about baseball, knucklers, personal catchers, and the short hand of keeping score than I ever thought I needed to know.
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