Girl Wonder : A Baseball Story in Nine Innings - Hardcover

Hopkinson, Deborah

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689833008 ISBN 13: 9780689833007

Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2003

Synopsis

Did you ever hear

the story

of the

Girl Wonder?

Alta Weiss was born to play baseball, simple as that. From the age of two, when she hurls a corncob at a pesky tomcat, folks in her small Ohio town know one thing for sure: She may be a girl, but she's got some arm.

When she's seventeen, Alta hears about a semipro team, the Independents. Here's her big chance! But one look at Alta's long skirts tells Coach all he needs to know -- girls can't play baseball!

Faster than you can say "strike out!," Alta's convinced him to give her a chance. And so with the crowd buzzing and the big game up to her, Alta steps up to the pitcher's mound, determined to prove everybody wrong.

Inspired by the life of pioneering female baseball player Alta Weiss, and dramatized by Terry Widener's bold illustrations, Girl Wonder tells the unforgettable story of a true American original.

About this title

About the Author:

Deborah Hopkinson is the author of numerous award-winning children's books, including Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, winner of the International Reading Association Award, Girl Wonder, winner of the Great Lakes Book Award, and Apples to Oregon, a Junior Library Guild Selection. She received the 2003 Washington State Book Award for Under the Quilt for the Night. She lives in Oregon. Visit her on the Web at www.deborahhopkinson.com.

Terry Widener is an award-winning illustrator whose picture books include Lou Gehrig: The Luckiest Man (a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book and an ALA Notable Book) and The Babe & I (a recipient of the California Young Reader Medal), both by David A. Adler, and Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings (a Junior Library Guild Selection) by Deborah Hopkinson. Mr. Widener lives with his family in McKinney, Texas.

From Booklist:

Gr. 2-4. "Nothing could keep me from baseball . . . By the time I was seventeen I'd struck out every boy in town." In prose that reflects the easy rhythms of balls and strikes, Hopkinson tells the story of teenager Alta Weiss, who in 1907 pitched for a semipro all-male team in Ohio. Alta's first-person narrative begins with her own memory of playing catch, and her family's image of her throwing a corn cob at a barn cat at the age of two. Alta practices, plays, and wins over the crowd in her first game. That summer she's the draw of her team, the Independents; people come to see "Girl Wonder" play. She plays a second season, but then she goes on to medical school (the only female in the class of 1914). Hopkinson enriches her burnished prose with an author's note about the real Alta Weiss and a chronology of women in baseball. Widener's exaggerated faces and rubbery-looking bodies are set in a picture plane of bright acrylics, where a bat or glove might pop out over the edge: a logo of ball and bats marks the innings of Alta's life. There's a sturdy charm to Alta's voice, and an unmistakable passion for the game. The black-and-white photograph on the back of the dust jacket brings added dimension to the story of a young woman who follows her dreams. GraceAnne DeCandido
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0689833008
• ISBN 13: 9780689833007
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 40
• Illustrator: Widener Terry