When Willard Met Babe Ruth - Softcover

Donald Hall

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0153144068 ISBN 13: 9780153144066

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin School, 1620

Synopsis

It is 1917 in rural New Hampshire when twelve-year-old Willard Babson and his father see a roadster slide into a ditch in front of them. "You know anybody can pull me out of here?" asks the tall young driver--and Willard realizes he's staring at Babe Ruth, the best left-hander in baseball.

About this title

About the Author

DONALD HALL lives in Danbury, New Hampshire.

BARRY MOSER lives in North Hatfield, Massachusetts.

From Booklist

Gr. 4^-6, younger for reading aloud. You hear a lot of twaddle about how baseball unites generations, but as with most cliches, there is a resonant truth in there somewhere, if only the speaker or writer or illustrator has the talent to reinvent it.

Hall and Moser have the talent to do just that. There is nothing remarkable about this story: a 12-year-old New Hampshire farm boy and his father, both avid baseball fans, are herding their geese across a country road one day when a slick roadster swerves to avoid the animals and winds up in the ditch. Yes, the driver of the roadster just happens to be Babe Ruth, star pitcher of the Boston Red Sox and young Willard's favorite player. The Babe gives Willard a baseball glove, and the family myth is begun. Years of Babe worship follow, extending even beyond the unfathomable trade of Ruth to the hated Yankees and encompassing a new generation, in the form of Willard's daughter, Ruthie (that's right, named after the Babe). What lifts all this beyond twaddle is Hall's ear and Moser's eye for detail. We feel and see the way the world was then--before television, before cyberspace--when the rhythm of the seasons had tangible meaning and when baseball talk was a good way to get through the harsh New England winter. Moser's nostalgic but never cloying full-page watercolors, characteristically sharp despite the abundance of earth tones, give Hall's carefully chosen words additional life. But despite the nostalgia, both words and pictures draw their energy from the sense of universality they bring to the experience of hero worship. We all need the power of myth to endure the dreariness of quotidian life, and for many of us, it is sports stars, from Achilles to Babe Ruth to Michael Jordan, who supply what we most crave. Bill Ott

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin School
• Publication date: 1620
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0153144068
• ISBN 13: 9780153144066
• Binding: Paperback
• Illustrator: Barry Moser
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 48