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Home Run Reading: Baseball and Books for Kids
A whiff of roasted peanuts and hot-buttered popcorn, a sunlight drenched field, the crack of a bat, and a roaring crowd- thereís nothing kids like better than a trip to the ball park.
The best way to connect kids to reading is to build on their passions and interests. If you have kids who love baseballóor as I do, have kids who like to go to ballpark to eat hot dogs, ogle the players, eat fried dough, start the wave, eat hot pretzels, cheer, and eat some moreóuse that interest to get them reading.
Use baseball to lure your kids into reading the newspaper. Scan the headlines on the front page of the sports section and find a baseball article you will both enjoy reading. Point out the articles featuring baseball and help them start a newspaper photo and clipping file on their favorite teams and players. Show them the baseball statistics page. If they do not know already, show them how to track their favorite teamís standing in the American and National Leagues, and explain the abbreviations in the Box Scores column.
Donít forget to show them your community paper, too. Small, local papers will have articles on your high schoolís baseball and softball teams. If your kid plays on a local team, or has friends that play, local papers often cover pre-high school community sports games and events. Almost every newspaper now has a website, so you can surf the Net together for more sports stories.
The next best thing to playing or watching baseball is to read a great baseball story. How can you make it fun?
- Pick a great book.
- Pick a cozy and/or fun place to read. The glider on the front porch, a blanket under a shade tree, or cool sheets on top of the bedóthese are all acceptable locations.
- Be willing to make a fool out of yourself when you read. Make faces. Use different voices. Kids love it when their parents act silly. It allows them to feel superior, a momentary delusion of course.
- Have your kids provide vocal sound effects for background atmosphere- cheering, booing, munching, cracks of bats, whirring ball noises, etc.
- Provide lots of hot buttered popcorn, and if you happen to have some fried dough in the house, all the better!
Great Baseball Books to Read With Kids:
Ask your local librarian to help you find these terrific baseball books and to suggest other books which may interest you and your family.
For the Whole Family-the most famous baseball story/poem of all time.
Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888
(Caldecott Honor Book, 2001) by Ernest Lawrence Thayer, illustrated by Christopher Bing
Picture Books for Kids 4-9
Baseball Saved Us-by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee
Dirt on Their Skirts: The Story of the Young Women Who Won the World Championship by Doreen Rappaport and Lyndall Callan, illustrated by Earl B. Lewis
Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth-by Mike Wimmer, illustrated by Robert Burleigh
Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man -by David A. Adler, illustrated by Terry Widener
Players in Pigtails- by Shana Corey, illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon
Teammates by Peter Golenbock, illustrated by Paul Bacon
Zachary's Ball- written and illustrated by Matt Tavares
Books for Kids 9-12
A Pitch in Time- by Robert A. Lytle
Satchel Paige -by Lesa Cline-Ransome, illustrated by James Ransome
Some Kind of Pride- by Maria Testa
A Strong Right Arm: The Story of Mamie "Peanut" Johnson- by Michelle Y. Green, with an introduction by Mamie Johnson
Summerland by Michael Chabon
In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson- by Bette Bao Lord
Books for Kids 12-18
Baseball in April and Other Stories-by Gary Soto
Farm Team by Will Weaver
Jackie Robinson and the Integration of Baseball by Scott Simon
The New Yorker Book of Baseball Cartoons-edited by Robert Mankoff and Michael Crawford
Painting the Black by Carl Deuker
© 2004 Mary Brigid Barrett
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