Book Cover for Keeping Score

Newbery Winning Author, Linda Sue Park, has done it again in this new book entitled, Keeping Score. From a family of baseball fans, Margaret Olivia was named to have the nickname Maggie-O, after Joe DiMaggio. Her father may be a Yankees fan, but she loves the Dodgers, afterall she is growing up in Brooklyn in the early 1950s. Maggie-O could quite possibly be the biggest Dodgers fan because of the scorebooks she learns to keep from a family friend, Jim. Unfortunately Jim ends up getting drafted to serve during the Korean War. Maggie writes letters mostly about baseball. It seems that baseball is the tie that binds family and friends together. Perhaps it can help heal war wounds too.

I loved this story and I am not a sports fan, but this book made me want to love baseball! Even though the main character is a girl, there are enough strong male character in the story to hold some boys interest. I’m sure our young guy readers would rather read this than Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree. Plus the subjects, war and baseball might entice many boy readers. Not too sappy of a read, but I did get misty eyed at a part about the war. I should create a cry-ometer scale for rating books.

Wednesday night the grandparents came down so James and I could go out to see the latest Harry Potter movie. I thought it was the funniest by far. I think that the young actors have grown so close during the making of these films that their own senses of humor and playfulness came across on the big screen.

I have to admit that one of my favorite parts of the night were seeing the trailer for the new Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief movie set for a release on February 12, 2010. Rick Riordan said he thought the trailer looked very promising. I loved it!

Of course there was also the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. I’m not so sure Spike Jones is making a children’s flick though it looks like it is going to be great. I can’t wait to take my Books Gone Hollywood class to go and see these in the theater.

I have been trying to chip away at the 67 books I’m reading over the summer for the Young Hoosier Book Awards Middle Grades selection committee. I’m finishing up book 17 this morning. I have a long way to go, but I stumbled across Oprah’s Summer Reading List and wanted to share. Her book clubs did amazing things to get people reading again.