Unfolding in mid-1980s Sacramento, California, this story stars 12-year-olds Rosalind and Benjamin as first-person narrators in alternating chapters. This pitch-perfect contemporary novel gently explores the past’s repercussions on the presentĪn aspiring scientist and a budding artist become friends and help each other with dream projects. The richly voiced third-person narrative, tightly focused through Genie’s point of view, introduces both brothers and readers to this rural African-American community and allows them to relax and explore even as it delves into the many mysteries that so bedevil Genie, ranging from "Grits? What exactly are they?" to, heartbreakingly, “Why am I so stupid?” Reynolds gives his readers uncommonly well-developed, complex characters, especially the completely believable Genie and Grandpop, whose stubborn self-sufficiency belies his vulnerability and whose flawed love both Genie and readers will cherish.
What’s behind the “ nunya bidness door”? And is that a gun sticking out from Grandpop’s waistband? Reynolds’ middle-grade debut meanders like the best kind of summer vacation but never loses sense of its throughline. And he and Ernie will have to do chores, like picking peas and scooping dog poop. Then, he breaks the model truck that’s one of the only things Grandma still has of his deceased uncle. Next, there’s no Internet, so the questions he keeps track of in his notebook (over 400 so far) will have to go un-Googled. 9-13)Įleven-year-old Brooklynite Genie has “worry issues,” so when he and his older brother, Ernie, are sent to Virginia to spend a month with their estranged grandparents while their parents “try to figure it all out,” he goes into overdrive.įirst, he discovers that Grandpop is blind. The fictional voice is sure and engaging, polished without being slick-an entertaining and compelling look at the deep roots of our national pastime. John Kiernan, the legendary journalist and facts man, lends a hand to a young numbers runner following a Brooklyn Robins game in the 1930s. An eager batboy from the Brooklyn Superbas persuades a talented Negro player to come to a tryout as an American Indian-and loses his love for his team when it’s clear that no one on the team will give Cyclone “Smoky” Joe Williams (later described as the best pitcher in any league) a chance to play. Abner Doubleday makes a very brief appearance at a Union Army camp (even as the author discredits the myth that Doubleday founded modern baseball).
Nearly nine generations span the years from Alexander Cartwright’s 1840s Knickerbocker Base Ball days to the present, and Gratz places a young character from a fictional family of Brooklynites in each, threading their stories together with the development of the American bat and ball game.
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