The Prince of Fenway Park - Softcover

Baggott, Julianna

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0060872446 ISBN 13: 9780060872441

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2011

Synopsis

1919

The Boston Red Sox sell Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees. And with that act, the Curse—and the lives of the Cursed Creatures—begins.

Oscar Egg believes he is cursed, just like his favorite team, the Boston Red Sox. Oscar's real parents didn't want him, and now his adopted mom has dumped him off to live with her estranged husband—Oscar's strange and sickly adoptive father. But Oscar's dad has a secret. He lives deep below Fenway Park, and is one of a number of strange magical souls called the Cursed Creatures, a group that has been doomed to live out their existence below Fenway until the Curse is broken. What no one could have predicted is that Oscar is the key to breaking the curse.

But someone wants Oscar to fail—and the Curse to remain. Forever.

About this title

About the Author:

Julianna Baggott is a poet and the author of several novels for adult readers, including Girl Talk, The Madam, and The Miss America Family, as well as Which Brings Me to You, cowritten with Steve Almond. As the pseudonymous N. E. Bode, she has written The Slippery Map, The Anybodies, The Nobodies, and The Somebodies. She lives with her family in Tallahassee, Florida.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 5–7—To baseball fans, "The Curse" means only one thing: the Red Sox's 86-year-long failure to win a World Series because their owner sold a young Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1919. Working from the brilliant premise that an enraged half-elven fan actually did curse the team, Baggott populates tunnels and back rooms around Fenway Park with a cast of magical creatures from the Banshee ("The Lost Soul of the Lost and Found") to a two-headed sportscaster named The Bobs—and sends into their midst 12-year-old Oscar Egg, a human child destined to break The Curse at last. Baseball is, however, only the context here; the story is really about racism, as exemplified both in Oscar's ruminations over his own mixed ancestry and in what he knows or discovers about the Sox's (and Major League Baseball's) dismal historical reluctance to break the color line. Traveling into the past, Oscar gathers up 12-year-old versions of Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, Ted Williams, Willie Mays and other stars for a climactic game against the less-worthy likes of Ty Cobb, Gaylord Perry, and Pete Rose at the same age. Before stands filled with the ghosts of taunting bigots and cheering supporters, that game plays out in tandem with the classic 2004 contest that turned the Yankees-Red Sox playoffs, and the Curse, around. Both whimsical and provocative (the "N" word crops up in some historical references), this story will engage readers who like clever tales, and also those who enjoy chewing over controversial themes.—John Peters, New York Public Library
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About this edition

• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0060872446
• ISBN 13: 9780060872441
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352