Baseball Books

Personal preference comes into playin this review, so I apologize. Even though I understand baseball more than football, I find baseball books extremely tedious, especially when as in the first two titles, Preller's Six Innings in the Game of Life and Jennings' Out Standing in My Field, they include rosters, scores, and diagrams. This, of course, is just what the boys who will read nothing but baseball books want.

Of course, you can't have a novel without a problem. Baseball likes to throw in players with cancer (Preller) or overbearing fathers (Jennings). I must say that I greatly enjoyed the biography of Jennings-- maybe he'll write a more general humor book! Zinnen's Holding at Third has a brother battling cancer. All are good and will circulate well. Just not my "cup of pink tea".

The stand out was Sharon Robinson's Safe at Home. Elijah, whose father has died, has to move to Harlem from Connecticut, and play baseball instead of basketball. Robinson (the daughter of Jackie) has worked with a lot of children and knows her baseball. Slam Dunk is the sequel to this one.