Now that the Durham Bulls are in full swing, you can celebrate the season with three new picture books about women's role in baseball. Though each furthers understanding of an important part of women's history, only one is an true hit.
Young Amy tells the story of her mama's baseball career in David Adler's Mama Played Baseball (HBJ, $16.00; ages 6-9 ).. During WW II, Amy's mama needs a job and decides to try out for the first professional women's league. It's hard for Amy to understand how playing baseball can possibly be a job, but soon she pitches in by helping her mama train. The story's situation has more strength than its characters and the time-specific images, like the Jack Benny show, will mean little to children. The story does reveal the wartime phenomena of women at work and at play on baseball diamonds. Debut artist Chris O'Leary hits a home run with his oils which are pleasantly reminiscent of the Depression-era and carry an energy that the text sometimes lacks.
Shana Corey is quickly developing a reputation for choosing unusual women for her picture biography portraits. This time she chooses a fictional heroine. Katie Casey, the star of the seldom sung verses of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" becomes Corey's focus character in Players in Pigtails (Scholastic, $16.95; ages 5-9). At the story's start, we're told that Katie's "not the kind of girl everyone thought she should be." Crumpled clothing, dancing failures and home ec disasters aside, "Katie was good at baseball." Family and friends don't approve however, until Phillip Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs sends out scouts to recruit girls from all over the country who love baseball, among them, Katie. When the sixteen "swanlike players" of All-American Girls Professional Baseball League walk on the field, they're jeered --until they begin to play! The ending of the book is a bit abrupt and it's difficult sometimes to tell if Corey's real interest is Katie, the period, or the AAGPBL, but the author's note is through on all counts! Illustrator Rebecca Gibbon definitely captures Katie's exuberance as well as the time's styles.
The book that scores a run is Deborah Hopkinson's Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings (Atheneum, $16.95; ages 5-9). This fictional story was inspired by a real pioneering baseball player, Alta Weiss. Hopkinson's clever organization and engaging first person narrator are hits. Ingeniously, she calls the book's short chapters "innings" and fills nine of them with Alta's humorous, lyrical voice. Both character and the book's rural setting are quickly established with colorful sensory imagery and lots of colloquial conversation. In the first inning, Alta hurls a corn cob across the barnyard and bops an old barncat and by the second she's wearing a glove as big as "one of Mama's prize sunflowers" and showing herself to be a "real Girl Wonder". Hopinkson strengthens settings, situations, and our caring for Alta by the emotions she pairs with images. In the third inning, Alta practices in a "bitter Ohio cold that couldn't put out the fire inside" her. We come to admire Alta's brains as well as her fast balls. She convinces an unwilling coach to put her on a semi-pro male team by reminding him of potential ticket sales. And by the book's end, in the ninth inning, Alta's become a doctor, again a pioneer, for she's the "only girl in the class of 1914. Hopkinson's love of word play shines through Alta's exuberant expression of her baseball passion. Terry Widener proves he's a major league illustrator. His larger than life figures fit Hopkinson's story like a glove!