CHANGE-UP

Loving baseball is not limited to the actual playing season. There’s the long winter filled with anticipation and memories. Then there’s the fresh start that comes in the spring, followed by summer games won and lost, heroics and errors and the wonderful tension of a championship autumn. All of these and more are subjects of a cycle of poems that span a baseball year in the life of a young narrator aglow with baseball love. He plays snow baseball in the winter, “warmed by the kind of thoughts / that help me get through February, / the hardest month.” He is also thoroughly supported by his family and teammates, all of whom share his joy and love of the game. Fehler’s verses are filled with aptly chosen descriptive language that engages all the senses. Some are concrete poems that take the shape of the subject or action. Wu’s bright acrylic-and–color pencil illustrations vary in size from small inserts to full-page extravaganzas and beautifully complement the text. A home-run gift for a baseball fanatic. (Poetry. 7-12)