Blech. This was a very hard read for me. Yes, the story was good I suppose. But all the baseball talk and terms was so annoying, or not annoying exactly, more time consuming to read and try to figure them all out. I mean, the last game of the book, yes, the championship game, was basically a play by play of all hits, up to bats, catches, every single play. Some of which I didn't understand, but I knew the main character and his team would have to be the winners, that's just how it usually comes out in kids' books. My thoughts are that this is so bogged down in baseball specifics and terminology that it won't be a popular hit among many readers. Yes, I know there are lots of kids out there who play sports. I also know that a lot of those kids aren't really big readers either, so you've cut down quite a bit on who will read the book. Now, that's just my opinion, I could be completely wrong. I just don't feel the story was strong enough outside of the baseball stuff that it will be a big hit on the Truman list.
The pattern I mentioned in my last blog about sports books is that the main characters are really good at whatever sport they play, but not THE best one on the team, they have a person who is their competition. The other thing is that their dads always seem to be former "really good athletes" who went on to do something other than sports because of an injury, or something else, and you can tell that the dad misses their sport and that affects their relationship with their athletic child. Now, I've really only read 2 sports books, so I guess I don't have that big of a scope to judge from, but I know there are a couple in the Mark Twain books I'll be reading soon, so I'll have to keep that in mind as I read those later and compare my thoughts when I blog about them.
Only 2 more on the Truman list to go!! Next is Antsy Does Time by Neal Shusterman. I've seen a couple books by Shusterman that looked interesting, this one was not one that jumped out. It is actually a sequel, and I'm assuming I'll be able to read it without reading the first one? I'll be sure to post my opinion on whether I'm missing something by reading this way when I blog in a couple days about it.
