"Baseball Saved Us"

Title: "Baseball Saved Us"
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Illustrator: Dom Lee
Publisher: Lee & Low Books. Inc.- 1993
Genre: historical fiction, multi-cultural, picture book- 1993 Parents' Choice Award
Grade: 3-6

The book starts off by talking about a little boy and his dad walking around on cracked dirt, which was where his dad had decided there should be a baseball field. The little boy could not understand why they had been put in these camps and his dad explains that it is because the Americans don't know who could be spying for the Japanese. The boy wasn't very good at sports so he got made fun of. Some people even called him a "Jap" which meant that they hated him. It was the next to last ballgame and the other team was up 3-2 with two outs and the boy was up to bat. He hit the ball so far it went past the guard's tower. He was the reason they won the game! After the boy got out of the internment camp, the boy decided to continue to play baseball.

I personally liked this book. I thought it was a great way to identify with students, especially boys because it deals with baseball. I love the illustratons in this book. Lee applied encaustic beeswax on paper and then scratched out the images. After this was done, he then added oil paint for color. The copyright page says that some of the illustrations were inspired by photographs taken by Ansel Adams in 1943 of the internment camps.

I would use this book in older elementary classes. I think this book is one that students will identify because it talks of baseball and how playing baseball saved this little boy. I also think that some students could identify with the little boy because he was always chosen last and was made fun of. I would use this book to teach my students about the internment camps. Throughout the book it talks of how the internment camps operated. It talked about bathrooms and the mess halls and how everyone ate and used the bathroom in the same place. I also liked the author's note and how it informs the reader of why the internment camps were made and how America finally admitted they were wrong!