Bat 6 - Softcover

Wolff, Virginia Euwer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0590898000 ISBN 13: 9780590898003

Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks, 2000

Synopsis

Told in the alternating voices of a cast of twenty girls, COMMUNITY SERVICE traces nine months in the life of two small towns in Oregon in 1948-49. The sixth grade girls of Bear Creek Ridge and Barlow traditionally play a softball game against each other each spring, called Bat 6. This year, Trout Creek Ridge reclaims Aki Yakamoto to its team. Aki and her family have been interned by the US government since 1942; both native and foreigner, Aki is welcomed by some but resented silently by others. Barlow has a real newcomer to its own sixth-grade: a girl who calls herself Shazam, with the best pitching arm either town has ever seen. Neglected by her mother, needy and angry, Shazam idealizes her dead father, who was killed at Pearl Harbor. During the months of preparation that lead up to the game, one potentially dangerous situation after another is defused by the community, which prides itself on its American virtues of hard work, forebearance, and stoicism. But nothing can defuse the tensions at Bat 6, which explode the artificial morality of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge in a shattering and shocking way.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

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Bat 6 - that's the softball game played every year between the sixth-grade girls of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge. All the girls - Beautiful Hair Hallie, Manzanita who gets the spirit, the twins Lola and Lila, Tootie, Shadean - they've been waiting for their turn at Bat 6 since they could first toss a ball.

This time there's a newcomer on each team: Aki, at first base for the Ridgers, who just returned with her family from a place she's too embarrassed to talk about. And Shazam, center field for Barlow, who's been shunted around by her mother since her father was killed on December 7, 1941.

The adults of the two towns would rather not speak about why Aki's family had to "go away." They can't quite admit just how "different" Shazam is. And that is why the two girls are on a collision course that explodes catastrophically on the morning of Bat 6, the day they've been preparing for all their lives.

About the Author

Virginia Euwer Wolff is an accomplished violinist and former elementary school and high school English teacher. Her first book for young readers, "Probably Still Nick Swansen", was published in 1988 and won both the International Reading Association Award and the PEN-West Book Award. Since then she has written several more critically acclaimed young adult novels, earning more honors, including the National Book Award for "True Believer", as well as the Golden Kite Award for Fiction and the Jane Addams Book Award for Children s Books that Build Peace. Her books include "Make Lemonade", "The Mozart Season", "This Full House" and "Bat 6". She lives in Oregon.

Edition details

• Publisher: Scholastic Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0590898000
• ISBN 13: 9780590898003
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240