Introduction Baseball Saved Us was written by Ken Mochizuki, a novelist, journalist and an actor. He is a native of Seattle, Washington located in the United States. After the war between the United States and Japan during World War II, is parents were forced to move to a Minidoka internment camp located in Idaho. He got his inspiration to write Baseball Saved Us when he read a magazine article about an Issei (a first generation Japanese American) man who established a baseball diamond and formed a league within the camps. Dom Lee, the Illustrator of the book, is a native of Seoul, South Korea. He received his masters from the School of Visual Arts located in New York City. He currently resides in New Jersey. According to information given …show more content…
With the use of metaphors and adjectives, “dry, cracked dirt, the blue sky, puffy white clouds to describe a state of something. Readers will come across part of speech, such as action words, “mumbled, funneled, glanced, gripped, and snapped.” The vocabulary level is between easy to moderate and the words are suitable to build on readers’ vocabulary. By reading Baseball Saved Us children can familiarize themselves with baseball terms, for example, “I played second base because my team said that was the easiest. The writing sequence and/ or pattern flows, where he uses the words: shaking, staring and yelling in one setting. “When we walked…my hands were shaking... all these mean eyes were staring… people in the crowd …show more content…
It deals with obstacles in life and the ways they are over come. Even if you are different, there are ways for everyone to fit in. The injustices in this book are well written to inform a large audience at many age levels. The book is also a great choice for those people who cheers for the underdogs. It served to illustrate how the simple things in life can mean everything. Baseball Saved Us is an award winner of the 1993 Parents’ Choice Award and has been given several positive reviewed from known critics. The New York Times quoted that it “Captures the confusion, wonder and terror… with convincing understatement.” Another noticeable source, American Bookseller, quoted that “Surrounded by guards, fences, and desert, Japanese-Americans in an internment camp create a baseball field. A young boy tells how baseball gave them a purpose while enduring injustice and humiliation. The first person narrative is moving.” I agree with both sources because after reading Baseball Saved Us I was blown away with the writing style and the illustration. It is a heart-felt story and leaves readers touched after the insight of what was a serious historical event. The book drove me to do extra research to get an understanding of what life was possibly like for those
... mature and be part of a group. Shade does not fit in and makes an effort throughout the story to do so. It is made difficult because Shade is a runt and he tries to change his way of thinking to fit in but the change is too drastic. He feels that he needs to prove himself to fit in but eventually his way of thinking changes and he learns more. When Shade completes his courageous journey, he feels much bigger and he shows his full potential. He feels bigger because he has grown physically and his personality has too. Many people would not have the courage to complete what Shade did. This novel clearly proved how much someone can gain from an opportunity to do something independently, and how much potential one can turn out to have even if it took a long and difficult task to prove it.
"Over the decades, African American teams played 445-recorded games against white teams, winning sixty-one percent of them." (Conrads, pg.8) The Negro Leagues were an alternative baseball group for African American baseball player that were denied the right to play with the white baseball payers in the Major League Baseball Association. In 1920, the first African American League was formed, and that paved the way for numerous African American innovation and movements. Fences, and Jackie Robinson: The Biography, raises consciousness about the baseball players that have been overlooked, and the struggle they had to endure simply because of their color.
Book Report on Baseball: A History of America's Game by Benjamin G. Rader In "Baseball: A History of America's Game", the Author Benjamin G. Rader discusses the history of baseball and how it developed to present day. Rader explains how baseball started as a simple game consisting of no rules besides the players using a stick to hit a ball and its constant evolution to what the game is today. He also displays several issues which America's favorite sport has had while developing into the complex sport it is today. Although baseball has had several trials and tribulations throughout its history, it still remains America's favorite pastime.
The WWII time period was a hard time for American families. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League helped to change the rights of women in the industrial world. Men took care of their responsibilities and served their time in war, but in the meantime, the world-winning women of the AAGPBL stormed the country by surprise. This league was a major success in our history and will leave its legacy among baseball fans for years to come.
In the early 20th century, baseball became the first professional sport to earn nationwide attention in America. Because it was our first national professional team sport, because of its immense popularity, and because of its reputation as being synonymous with America, baseball has been written about more than any other sport, in both fiction and non-fiction alike. As baseball grew popular so did some of the sportswriters who wrote about the game in the daily newspaper. Collectively, the sportswriters of the early 20th century launched a written history of baseball that transformed the game into a “national symbol” of American culture, a “guardian” of America’s traditional values, and as a “gateway” to an idealized past. (Skolnik 3) No American sport has a history as long—or as romanticized—as that of the game referred to as our “national pastime.”
"Baseball Goes To War: The National Pastime In World War II." American Veteran Center. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
No author / author / author. July 2013. Baseball as a game of America. USA Today. Retrieved November 14, 2014, from http://usatoday.com.
Harth, Erica. Last Witnesses: Reflections on the Wartime Internment of Japanese Americans. New York: Palgrave for St. Martin's, 2001. Print.
The Kelvey family’s low income and less fortunate lives made them experience different treatments from many people. For example, “Even the teacher had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other children when Lil Kelvey came up to her desk with a bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers.” In their lives, people treated the Kelveys differently from others just because of their financial situation. This helps further make it evident that many different things factor into the experience of being an outsider. For the Kelveys, it was social status and how they were seen because of their lifestyle. As seen from the 3 different texts, the universal feeling of being an outsider stands as something to be learned from. Although everyone may be an outsider in the regards of someone else, it is not hard to treat a fellow human as if they were not an outsider. Anyone can be an outsider, but everyone can be an insider if enough effort is
Book Review of Eight Men Out The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series by Eliot Asinof
This book teaches the importance of self-expression and independence. If we did not have these necessities, then life would be like those in this novel. Empty, redundant, and fearful of what is going on. The quotes above show how different life can be without our basic freedoms. This novel was very interesting and it shows, no matter how dismal a situation is, there is always a way out if you never give up, even if you have to do it alone.
... constant struggle of oppression that human beings have faced throughout history and continue to face. These books are a testimony to the strength of those caught in the struggle and how good change and growth can evolve out of the bad. Struggle is a part of life and through it people can become stronger and learn more about themselves and the world. Power struggles offer opportunity for the oppressors to escape societies hold on them and to become truly aware of the suffering of those who they oppress, it offers the oppressed the opportunity to rise up and it offers society a chance to reform itself and its people. Events of oppression and the inevitable uprising of the underdog offer the perfect opportunity for important change to occur for the greater good of all.
The United States of America a nation known for allowing freedom, equality, justice, and most of all a chance for immigrants to attain the American dream. However, that “America” was hardly recognizable during the 1940’s when President Franklin Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, ordering 120,000 Japanese Americans to be relocated to internment camps. As for the aftermath, little is known beyond the historical documents and stories from those affected. Through John Okada’s novel, No-No Boy, a closer picture of the aftermath of the internment is shown through the events of the protagonist, Ichiro. It provides a more human perspective that is filled with emotions and connections that are unattainable from an ordinary historical document. In the novel, Ichiro had a life full of possibilities until he was stripped of his entire identity and had to watch those opportunities diminish before him. The war between Japan and the United States manifested itself into an internal way between his Japanese and American identities. Ichiro’s self-deprecating nature that he developed from this identity clash clearly questions American values, such as freedom and equality which creates a bigger picture of this indistinguishable “America” that has been known for its freedom, equality, and helping the oppressed.
Tygiel, Jules. 2001; 2000. Past time: Baseball as history. Oxford England; New York: Oxford University Press.
Thanks to gambling, baseball got its first big popularity boost. At the time, money was a big draw to the families coming out of the war. This was due to the focus on family and being able to provide for them, after a time of absence and low economic times. Baseball began as a game mainly for schoolboys, because older men didn’t view it as something they could make