A book about baseball . . . and so much more. Two little league teams, Earl Grubb's Pool Supplies and Northeast Gas & Electric, are in the championship game. The players are twenty four baseball loving boys, age eleven to thirteen. Inning by inning, play by play, the game unfolds before us, tense and exciting. I could almost taste the hot dogs and sunflower seeds as I read it! But there's more to this story than the pitches, hits, and runs. Preller takes us, not just play by play, but boy by boy, inside their individual lives, which are so varied from each other yet full of similar triumphs and heartaches. Baseball fans will enjoy the intricate knowledge of the game the author shows throughout the book. But it's the life stories of these young boys that make this a worthwhile read. Find it in Juvenile Fiction, under Preller, 143 pages short.
Faker By Gordon Korman New York: Scholastic Press, 2024. Fiction. 214 pages. 12-year-old Trey is used to starting over at a new school -- he has the routine perfectly memorized: make new friends, introduce his dad to the wealthy parents of his new friends, and "Houdini" themselves out of there before they get caught running their latest scam. Trey's dad is a master con artist, and Trey has just been promoted to full-partner. Their new scheme for the next big score brings them to the affluent suburb of Boxelder, TN where Trey's dad has cooked up a fake electric car company for investors to buy into. The only problem is that Trey is starting to grow tired of moving around and never putting down roots, especially after forming a fast friendship with Logan and developing a crush on Kaylee, a socially conscious girl in his class. As Trey longs for a normal life, is there any way he can convince his dad to get out of the family business? Gordon Korman is a perennial favorit...
Comments
James Preller