The Aurora County All-Stars

The Aurora County All-Stars
by Deborah Wiles
Harcourt, Inc., 2007

Genre: Sports, Fiction

Honors:

• Booklist 09/01/07
• Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books 12/01/07
• Horn Book starred 04/01/08
• Kirkus Reviews starred 07/01/07
• National Book Award Finalist
• Publishers Weekly starred 07/09/07
• School Library Journal 10/01/07
• Wilson's Children 10/01/10
• Wilson's Junior High School 11/01/08

Review: House Jackson, a quiet, reserved baseball pitcher, has a secret only his family knows about: after fourteen-year-old dancing student, Frances Shotz, crashes into House and breaks his elbow the previous year, he had to miss out on his team's yearly baseball game and spend every day reading to his dying neighbor, Mr. Boyd. After Mr. Boyd finally passes on, House finds himself in the center of a conflict between the Mamas and the Aurora County All-Star baseball team when the county decides to hold a special parade and performance on the day of the county's anniversary, which happens to be the Fourth of July and the same day the baseball team plays against their rival, the Redbugs. House faces off with Frances and decides that--anniversary pageant or no anniversary pageant--he is not going to miss out on his game for a second year in a row. With the help of some clues left behind by the late Mr. Boyd, House learns some important information about the significant historic ties between Aurora County and race relations in baseball in the last fifty years, and he gets an idea that just might work for everyone.

Opinion: This book is just spectacular on so many levels. It deals with prejudice, racism, death, sexism, fear of reclusive individuals in the community, and on top of that, Wiles provides some very rich and fascinating details about Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, and other historic baseball players who were a part of the struggle for acceptance of black athletes in American sports. I was inspired by House's devotion to these two players and their fictional counterparts, Mr. Boyd and his African American friend, Mr. Shotz, whom was denied the right to play with Mr. Boyd in the 1960s when they were boys and shared a love of baseball. All of these lessons are very delicately woven into a dramatic story for boys and girls alike about doing what you love and standing up for your right to be what you want to be.

Ideas: I recently found a couple of picture book biographies of Koufax and Robinson at the library and I thought they would be complementary to this book for a biography research assignment. That way the fictional representations of these two baseball players can be tested via a biography.