Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth - Hardcover

Burleigh, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0152009701 ISBN 13: 9780152009700

Publisher: Silver Whistle, 1998

Synopsis

Like most boys, he spent his summers playing ball on a dirt lot, but George Herman Ruth, Jr. followed his dreams to become a legend. He is the Babe—Babe Ruth—and baseball is his game.

Powerful oil paintings and spare, dramatic text draw readers into the mind of this larger-than-life sports hero. Reproductions of vintage-style baseball cards throughout the book detail Babe Ruth's career highlights.

Home Run is a compelling portrait of a man, and of a time when baseball was truly America's game.

About this title

Review:

"He has always had this swing. This easy, upthrusting swing. This 'pretty' swing, not taught by any coach. One day the Babe just swung--and it was there. It was his." Combining stirring, poetic prose and Mike Wimmer's realistic illustrations, Home Run conveys the feeling of excitement and awe that must have been present at a baseball game in which the great Babe Ruth played. Robert Burleigh, who previously collaborated with Wimmer on the award-winning Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh, writes this picture-book tribute "for my Father--who loved the game ... for my son, Eli, to help him learn the spirit of can-do." His great love for both shines through. Our stomachs knot and spirits soar as Ruth steps up to the plate. Home Run softly draws us into the story, and the illustrations, rendered in oil on canvas, have an expansiveness and glow that lift them from the page. The gentle tribute is enhanced by "vintage-style baseball cards" that highlight aspects of Babe Ruth's career ("The Bambino loved driving low-slung convertibles, donning silk shirts and coonskin coats, and downing huge meals"), allowing Burleigh the opportunity to include important information without destroying the perfect simplicity of the main story. A treasure for anyone with a love of the game, Home Run is also powerfully affecting for those new to the excitement it holds. (Click to see a sample spread. Illustration from Home Run by Robert Burleigh, illustration © 1998 by Mike Wimmer, reproduced by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company.) (Ages 5 and older) --Aimee Damman

About the Author:

Robert Burleigh is a longtime baseball fan and the author of many books for children. His previous collaboration with Mike Wimmer, Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh, received the Orbis Pictus Award for the best nonfiction book of the year. His book Hoops (Silver Whistle, 1997), illustrated by Stephen T. Johnson, was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and a Booklist Editors' Choice. Mr. Burleigh lives in Chicago, Illinois.

Mike Wimmer is the illustrator of Train Song by Diane Siebert, Bully for You, Teddy Roosevelt by Jean Fritz, All the Places to Love by Patricia Machlachlan, and Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh by Robert Burleigh, which received the Orbis Pictus Award for the best nonfiction book of the year. The Chicago Sun-Times has described his artwork as "reminiscent of some of Norman Rockwell's best." Mr. Wimmer lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

About this edition

• Publisher: Silver Whistle
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0152009701
• ISBN 13: 9780152009700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32
• Illustrator: Wimmer Mike