Baseball Saved Us

Book Title: Baseball Saved Us

Author(s): Ken Mochizuki

Illustrator/Photographer/Artist: Dom Lee

Publisher: Lee & Low Books

Copyright Date: 1993

Genre: Historical fiction

Brief Annotation: This story of a young Japanese-American boy is told in first person as his family is relocated to an American internment camp during the 1940s. To keep spirits up, the Japanese-American families in "Camp" build a baseball field to distract and unite members of their culture during this dark period in American history. The young boy has never been a talented athlete, but he manages to channel his anger at the guards into his baseball game and ends up as a star. When his family goes back to their neighborhood and old schools post-1945 the young boy uses his new-found confidence to defy anybody to make him feel ostracized on a personal or athletic level.

Your Rating (1-5) and why: 4--I've never heard a story like this for children before. I'm a huge twentieth century American history buff, and I know that I would have liked this book even as a child. I like that it's told in first person and doesn't end after the families are released from the internment camps. The young boy carries the lessons he learned in Camp with him onward in life.

Readers who will like this book: Readers who are interested in history (obviously) will like this book. Rough patches in American history can be a difficult topic to tackle in the classroom, and I think the first-person delivery will function as a kid explaining what it felt and looked like to another 'kid' (the reader) will be very effective.

Teaching Strategy from Tompkins or Yopp & Yopp (you'll link a strategy to at least 10 of your 40 books) : Questioning the Author ( Tompkins, p. 88): This strategy teaches students to develop 'queries' to develop comprehension, rather than just fact recall after a story. Teachers can ask questions to tackle larger issues underlying what the author says verbatim, like "What is the author trying to tell us with this story," "Why is the author including this detail," or "Why do you think the author chose to write about this experience?"

Question to ask about this book before a read aloud: What sports do you all enjoy playing? What do you like about playing on a team? Can you think of some times having a 'team' around you would help you?