Casey at the bat (sandcastle) - Hardcover

Polacco, Ernest L.

4.06

2,669 ratings by Goodreads

9780399218842: Casey at the bat (sandcastle)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039921884X ISBN 13: 9780399218842

Publisher: Putnam Juvenile, 1992

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Things aren't looking promising for the Mudville Nine: it's the bottom of the ninth with two outs, and they're trailing 4-2. But Flynn blasts a single, and Blake tears the cover off the ball, and when the dust lifts, there are runners hugging second and third, and Mighty Casey is stepping into the box.

Few passions have created more myths in the American mind than baseball, and no poem has captured its lure or lore better than Ernest Lawrence Thayer's beloved "Casey at the Bat." Here is the classic edition; newly set, illustrated with full-color watercolors by Barry Moser (America's premier artist of the book), and containing an Afterword by the irrepressible Donald Hall, whose affectionate and affecting essay celebrates the poem, its hero, and that searing moment in each of our lives when, in front of all those we hold dear, we manage to strike out.

This handsome edition of our national ballad will bring the drama of Casey to life in a vivid and memorable volume. Take it home, read it aloud to your children, bury yourself in its cadences, and relive once again that fateful afternoon when Casey steps up to the plate and the summer air is shattered by the force of his blow.

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About the Author:

Ernest L. Thayer was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in 1863. He grew up in nearby Worcester, attended Harvard College, and afterward, worked at the San Francisco Daily Examiner. While there, he wrote news stories, editorials, and ballads as well as a humorous column that he signed with the nickname "Phin."

Thayer returned to the East Coast in 1888. Shortly after his return he wrote Casey at the Bat and sent it to the Examiner where on June 3, 1888, it was printed on the editorial page and signed "Phin." After years of being performed on stage and radio, the ballad became immortalized, and is now known and loved by generations of baseball fans around the world.

From School Library Journal:

Grade 3 Up Since the birth of the original ballad 100 years ago, the mock despair generated by Thayer's versification has provided minor Aristotelean catharsis for millions of Americans. If ever there were a hero brought to a tragic end by a character flaw, it's Mighty Casey. This is the stuff of myth. But by making her Casey a little leaguer, Polacco has emasculated the power of the legend. Adding on a prologue with a bratty kid sister and an epilogue with a wimpy moral (``counting my hits before they were pitched'') only dilutes the majesty of the poem's final line. Her genuine drawing talent; her inventiveness in creating and arranging groups of caricatures; her ability to depict scenes that are provocatively animated, that utilize a range of viewpoints to produce compelling melodramathese attributes are misplaced here. A cocky adolescent sure isn't one to stimulate the passion of these verses. And part of the fun is the perception of grown-ups taking a game of balls and bats seriously, in the first place. This irony is totally lost too. Polacco, like Casey, has struck out. Kenneth Marantz, Art Education Department, Ohio State Univ . , Columbus
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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