TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME!

A rhyming primer on baseball history, mashed up with the classic song.

Set against abstract backdrops of storied ballfields over the decades, stylized illustrations feature players striking dynamic poses as they pitch, bat, and slide. Beginning in the 1920s, the rhyming text breezes through milestones and big names in baseball, including Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier and the sport’s growing popularity in Latin America and Asia. This macro-level view compresses onto a single page the wartime All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, which didn’t accept Black women, and the few female players in the Negro Leagues in the 1950s; readers will need to pay careful attention to the backmatter to parse this era. The vibrant illustrations evoke the excitement of a sporting audience, though fans may deflate upon reading the book aloud. The text repeats the lyrics of the traditional ballpark ditty twice, but neither the meter nor the rhyme scheme of the new copy conforms to the song’s pattern, leaving readers caught between multiple scansions. Backmatter includes a QR code linked to an audio singalong, a timeline, a basic explanation of the game, instructions for playing catch, and brief biographies of 10 significant players, such as Jim Abbott, born without a right hand, who pitched a no-hitter in 1993. The fans and players depicted are racially diverse.

A notably inclusive look at the great American pastime, let down by inelegant text.