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The Lucky Baseball
Harry Yakamoto grew up in Seven Cedars, California playing baseball, going to school, and working at his family's restaurant. As a young Japanese American, he faced discrimination daily, but when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, his life would change forever. Forced to move to a relocation center in the desert of California, Harry and his family have to start a new life behind barbed wire and guarded watchtowers. Readers follow Harry Yakamoto in this World War II story as he learns to live through difficult conditions in a Japanese-American internment camp.
* Reviews *
Like Ken Mochizuki's classic picture book Baseball Saved Us (1993), this entry in the Historical Fiction Adventures series tells the story of a Japanese American kid whose love of baseball helps sustain him during his years spent in a World War II relocation camp. After Pearl Harbor is attacked, 12-year-old Harry Yakamoto's family is forced to leave their restaurant behind and begin a new life at Manzanar, a "windy sandbox of a prison" in eastern California. Camp life becomes a bit more bearable, though, after Harry and his best friend, Mike, start a youth baseball league. The details of life in the camp, from the reeking latrines to the food that improves after Harry's family takes over the block's kitchen, are sharp and memorable, and Lieurance adds gentle conflict as Harry tries to fulfill family responsibilities and defend his passion for baseball to his scornful dad. A nonfiction "Real History" chapter closes this title, which folds uplifting messages of community strength into its child's view of racial discrimination and internment., Booklist September 1, 2009
RL
Grades
3-5 IL
Grades
3-6 GRL
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