Baseball Saved Us

Title: Baseball Saved Us
Author: Ken Mochizuki
Illustrator: Dom Lee
Genre: Historical Fiction

Baseball Saved Us is a book based in 1942 when the U.S. Army moved all Japanese people away from the west coast. It is about a young Japanese boy that goes to a camp and gets mistreated and picked last for everything because he is smaller and weaker, and in general just not a great baseball player. As the camp goes on he stays getting mistreated by the other players until the last game of the season, he gets the game winner hit. From that point on the boy is chosen and more accepted as a Japanese baseball player.

I would read this book to a second grade class to teach them not to judge. I would read this during the baseball little league season so the students can make a more clear relation with the book. For example, I think it is important for the kids to know that it is not nice to judge the striving athletes. Children need to understand that some are more gifted than others and it is important to treat everybody with the same respect.