Reaching the Next Generation: Jackie Robinson’s Story in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” – Jackie Robinson

As people and events recede into the mists of the past, people and events that have resonated in our own times become as remote to the next generation as ancient history is to ours, and our task is to find ways to keep alive those parts of the past that we value. But keeping the past alive is a tricky proposition as the historic record becomes a crowded avenue with all sorts of important people and events pushing and shoving to keep their place in our collective memories.

Children’s and young adult literature and films have a unique place in the process of deciding who, what, how, and whether we remember the past. Through picture books, graphic media that looks a lot like what we of a certain age used to call comic books (remember Classic Comics, boys and girls?), and chapter books, parents, librarians, and teachers make choices about what their kids read and watch long before they can choose for themselves.

What do we want children’s and young adult literature to bring into our kids’ universes? Well, we want them to learn something. We want them to feel something. We want them to travel with people they will never meet to worlds they may never visit. We want them to enjoy these adventures. We want them to find worthy heroines and heroes. We want them to see things through the eyes of other people. And we want to show them what we value through the choices we offer them early in their lives.

This is especially important in the case of the earliest books for children, picture books, and the pictures in books used as illustrations. Far from being strictly the domain of the youngest emerging readers, picture books and illustrations can be wonderful portals into that most permanent memory-maker, visual imagery. Kadir Nelson’s We Are the Ship, The Story of Negro League Baseball,1 is an apt example of a picture book for all ages. But because they are such potent transmitters of long-lasting imagery, they can also be a minefield for the same reason. The imagery of Disney characters is an apt example of this.

In the case of films for children, we’ve seen how many of Disney’s visual portrayals of native people and other cultures have come under intense scrutiny. “[W]ho can deny the fact that Disney provides many young children in the United States with their first glimpse of the larger world, some of their first ideas about people and cultures in the Middle East (Aladdin), Africa (The Lion King, Tarzan), India (The Jungle Book), China (Mulan), as well as Native American (Pocahontas, Peter Pan) and African American culture (Dumbo, The Lion King)?”2 I’d add to this list Song of the South.

A recent critic offered a summary of some of these problems. For example,

In Disney’s 1941 film, Dumbo, the leader of a pack of crows is named Jim Crow. The poor and seemingly uneducated crows use slang and black vernacular while calling each other ‘brotha.’ That portrayal drew scrutiny for stereotypical depiction of African-Americans. ‘I’d be done see’n about everything, when I see an elephant fly,’ the jive-talking crows sing. Song of the South, a 1946 Disney musical about post-Civil War Georgia, came under intense criticism from black civil-rights leaders for its depiction of African-Americans. They said the Uncle Remus collection of black folklore stories was based on racial caricatures.3

As a result, the film has not been released since.

Indeed, these kinds of concerns have a long history that reflect our country’s uncomfortable racial past. Imagery, common to 19th century and early 20th century popular magazines such as Leslie’s Weekly cover art, “Baseball at Possumville,” and Harper’s Weekly, “Baseball at Blackville,” and lithographs by Currier and Ives prints found on postcards and calendars, “A Foul Tip” and “A Baseball Hit,” demeaned and ridiculed African American players by portraying them as inept buffoons, in large part justifying in the public’s mind their exclusion from the White leagues.

For an in-depth exploration of the Jim Crow past that produced the Negro Leagues, a stroll through Ferris State University’s Museum of Jim Crow is a painful but necessary confrontation with White supremacy, the same White supremacy that made Jackie Robinson’s courage remarkable.4

What we don’t want to do is bore them to tears. Parson Weems, the early pedant who famously used public admiration of George Washington as a vehicle to teach moral rectitude to children, may have been okay in his day, but I doubt it. Even the most avid young student of history can’t help but think the “cherry tree” story is more than a little fishy. No, we don’t want to feed them a diet of plaster saints to admire and ignore.

In the case of telling Jackie Robinson’s story, there is the complexity of how best to explain the adversity he faced. By singling out Robinson’s story as a life worth remembering, we can’t help but run directly into the wall that Jim Crow built. Smart kids are going to want to know why he couldn’t play in the major leagues. By extension, they may follow up with questions about why the major leagues were closed to African American players in the first place. After all, how could Jackie be chosen if there weren’t equally capable choices from which to choose. And where did those other baseball players play? Were there other ballclubs just for them? Suddenly a universe of interest has opened up.

So, glossing over the racism and Jim Crow laws of his times closes down all these promising avenues of interest for students. Fully calling out the racism of the time, however, runs the risk of opening up a painful past and raising uncomfortable conversations about the present. But as we now see, not confronting this painful past is not an option. How and how much and at what age we do the confronting are the questions that children’s and young adult literature have been asking and answering. How well has that been done and what new directions are being taken?

One other area worth noting, especially if these books are used in classrooms (and they should be) is assessing the actual prior knowledge and world views of teachers and students. Teaching about Jackie Robinson as a stand-alone figure can result in missing the valuable context from which to understand his role in both baseball and civil rights. As I was reading the sampling of children’s and young adult literature about him, I was struck that mention of the Negro Leagues, with some notable exceptions discussed below, was given minimal attention. Really, how do you explain why his story is worthy, if you don’t explain why his entry into major-league baseball was extraordinary?

Add to that, the muddled status of co-hero given to Branch Rickey also becomes problematic. If you asked Effa Manley, co-owner and business manager of the Newark Eagles, if Rickey was a hero, you would get a resounding “No!” The push for White baseball to open its doors to Black players was advocated by everyone in the Black community, including Effa Manley. But the often underhanded way that Rickey and other owners robbed the Negro League teams of players without honoring contracts or paying for their services can be seen as leading directly to the demise of the Negro Leagues. This was not an expected or happy outcome. So while integrating White baseball was the goal, losing everything to do it was not.

While the story is one of an exceptional man, it can and should be a portal to understanding the world he came from so students can appreciate that although Jackie was exceptional because of his place in a historic moment, he was one of hundreds of exceptional players – any one of whom could have taken his place. When asked about Negro League players worthy of induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, Effa Manley said, “I could name a hundred, but I’d settle for thirty!”5

We also need to show the injustice of the system. Even the youngest students understand the concept of fairness and will respond to the idea that opportunity is a door that should have been open to those who didn’t qualify as exceptional, but were as talented as, and sometimes more talented than, any of the White players on major-league teams. That was the source of Troy’s frustration in August Wilson’s play Fences.

A former Negro League player, Troy was outraged at Jackie Robinson’s entry into major-league baseball. “Times have changed,” his wife tells him. “You just come along too early.” His response: “There ought not never had been no time called too early!” He recalls someone who played right field for the Yankees. “Man batting .269. What kind of sense that make? I was hitting .432 with 37 home runs!” When his wife says, “Folks had to wait for Jackie Robinson,” he explodes. “I done seen a hundred niggers play baseball better than Jackie Robinson. Hell, I know some teams Jackie Robinson couldn’t make! … Don’t care what color you were. Come telling me I come along too early. If you could play … then they ought to have let you play.”6 Any and all of the books for children and young adults open opportunities for parents or teachers to introduce the concept of injustice, an opportunity that should be taken.

To begin evaluating how Jackie Robinson is represented in children’s and young adult literature, I selected a representative sampling of the many, many books available about him. For this, I turned to widely respected publishers and authors. They ranged from the most basic, My Little Golden Book About Jackie Robinson,7 published in 2018, to Step into Reading’s Jackie Robinson and the Story of All-Black Baseball,8 and Penguin’s Young Readers, Level 3, Jackie Robinson, He Led the Way.9 Chapter books included Scholastic Press’s books by Sharon Robinson, The Hero Two Doors Down10 and Child of the Dream.11 Two that take a very different path are Lee and Low’s Baseball Saved Us12 by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee, and Bette Bao Lord’s classic, from HarperCollins Press, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson.13 I also reviewed the picture books Dad, Jackie, and Me,14 by Myron Uhlberg, illustrated by Colin Bootman, and Sharon Robinson’s Promises to Keep.15

The criteria I used to evaluate all of the materials included the quality of the writing, age appropriateness, contextual background for Jackie’s story, factual integrity, and more ephemeral qualities: Was it interesting? Was the story told in such a way that it was likely to engage young readers? For this last quality, besides my own judgment, I turned to reviews on a variety of booksellers’ websites for other readers’, teachers’, and students’ comments and recommendations.

As schools strive for a more inclusive curriculum, teaching Jackie Robinson’s story offers multiple opportunities to weave Black history into the American story. It, of course, lends itself to inclusion in Black History Month lessons. And it’s also a story that can coordinate with the major leagues’ Jackie Robinson Day every April 15, the anniversary of his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. But the baseball season is a long one stretching from opening days in April to the frosty evenings of late October, so for teachers his story can be integrated at nearly any point in the year’s curriculum, especially when they put his story in the context of American history itself. Baseball’s season is a long one, and its history is equally long. The back story of Jackie Robinson’s story is the great swath of American history from Reconstruction to the civil-rights movement of the early 1960s and beyond.

For teachers, a good place to refresh their own background on this lengthy timeframe is the teacher edition of Before Jackie: The Negro Leagues, Civil Rights, and the American Dream.16 In it, teachers will find clear connections between the people and events of the Reconstruction Era and first half of the twentieth century that impacted directly on the history of baseball and the America that produced both the Negro Leagues and Jackie Robinson. Another plus is that it also provides teaching suggestions that cover this era. Equally helpful would be the student edition of this same title.

For older students looking for background material, two are recommended: Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues, by Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick McKissack Jr., and Jackie Robinson and the Story of All-Black Baseball, by Jim O’Connor with illustrations by Jim Butcher.17 Black Diamond is a chapter book recommended for students in grades 3-7. Jackie Robinson is on Step 5 of Random House’s Step into Reading series. All but the most advanced readers in grade 3 will find Black Diamond daunting, so a more reasonable recommendation would be for students in grades 5-7. Both books are very nicely illustrated and make good use of vintage photographs. Of all the documentaries available for background information on the Negro Leagues, one of the best is Life in the Negro Leagues, There Was Always Sun Shining Someplace, 1981, 59 minutes; available in its entirety with captions on YouTube.18

An overview of the reviews of parents, educators, evaluators like School Library Journal and the Center for Children’s Books showed that they cared about the quality of the books they selected for their children and students. Comments referenced readability, accuracy of information, historical context, the quality of the illustrations, and the interest levels of their children and students. One of the burdens carried by all of the books was the real possibility that the selection may be the only book about Jackie Robinson that a child or student may read. As might be expected, professional reviewers were more exacting about their recommendations, whereas parents and teachers remarked more often about how their own child or class responded to a particular selection. I was glad to see that each of the selections offered some of the necessary historical context for appreciating Jackie Robinson’s story and how often parents’ reviews commented on the quality of the historical context given. To be sure, My Little Golden Book About Jackie Robinson doesn’t offer the same detail that books for older children contained, but it doesn’t shy away from the racial segregation that shaped Jackie’s life. Indeed, it is illustrated with a two-page picture of passengers on a segregated bus. Jackie stands with his back to the reader at the front of the aisle. Looking down the row of seats the reader sees the averted and suspicious eyes of the White passengers and the large signs denoting “Only Colored Passengers.” In this way, even the youngest readers will have the opportunity to begin processing this part of our past.

Apt comparisons between professional reviews, educators’ reviews, and a parent’s review19 is illustrated in the reviews of the books Step into Reading, Jackie Robinson and Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson. The School Library Journal reviewer, Tom Hurlburt of Rio Rancho Public Library, for Step Into Reading, Jackie Robinson, was put off, writing that “a more indicative title for this book might be The Story of All-Black Baseball and Jackie Robinson …” and criticizing the writing style as choppy and unimaginative, the illustrations as unremarkable.

The Bulletin, from the Center for Children’s Books, an “educational research center whose mission is to facilitate the creation and dissemination of exemplary and progressive research and scholarship related to youth-focused resources, literature, and librarian-ship,”20 was pleased that the book had “the story of the rise and fall of black baseball and some of its star players and managers.” Mr. Hurlburt is, however, a tough guy to impress. In his review of Stealing Home: The Story of Jackie Robinson, he starts: “Still another biography of the black baseball pioneer.” Ho hum, I guess! He then complains that the “standard black-and-white photographs, many of which are found in the plethora of juvenile Robinson biographies that abound, are included. …”

A parent’s review of Stealing Home, however, spoke to the illusive quality of interest. She was excited that her third-grade “reluctant” reader really enjoyed it. And she further commented that she was “pleased with its coverage of the history of segregated America – adding to its inspirational qualities.” As to the comment regarding the repetition of photographs in juvenile biographies, the fact that there are many books with the “standard black-and-white photographs” actually enhances the chances that readers will see these photographs no matter which of the books they choose. Happily, one of the positive aspects of nearly all of the books, including My Little Golden Book About Jackie Robinson, was their inclusion of Jackie’s “after baseball” story and his work as an advocate for civil rights.

Many of the reviews emphasized that both parents and teachers were looking to evaluate the educational impact of their selections. One five-star reviewer sent me back to reread The Magic Treehouse, Play Ball Jackie Robinson. For this parent, the book’s best feature was its readability for her son with dyslexia. At second glance, it’s clear why she was so enthusiastic. The print is large and clear and the sentences are relatively short, neither of which detracts from the engaging writing style. There is nothing on the flyleaf or inside that says the book was written with students with dyslexia in mind, but it seems that, intentional or not, it’s hitting that mark.

Two books told the story of Jackie Robinson through the eyes of youngsters dealing with handicaps. Myron Uhlberg’s Dad, Jackie, and Me, tells the author’s story. Uhlberg’s dad was deaf and felt a personal connection to Jackie Robinson because of his own experience with prejudice. The main event was going to Ebbets Field to watch Jackie play. Through conversations between father and son we learn that when the father was in a residential school for deaf students, “it was considered a waste of time to teach deaf kids to play sports.” One of the criticisms of the book from a parent was that the real “meat” of the story is in the afterword. As this reviewer writes, “In the story itself, we’re told that ‘The Giants hated Jackie Robinson,’but no detail is given.” The afterword explains that the author’s father told him to watch for all the unfair treatment Robinson would get but it’s left out of the story’s narrative proper. Much of what would explain why Robinson was the butt of this kind of prejudice is simply not part of the main story. That’s a shame, since the afterword is one of the best features of the book. Because it is a designated picture book, I gave special attention to the illustrations. I think most people would find them vivid and engaging. The inside covers front and back are filled with replicas of newspaper clippings and the team picture of the 1947 Dodgers. The inside pages use to good advantage the space of its 9½-by-11 format to re-create in deep reds, blues, and greens the Brooklyn neighborhood of 1947 and Ebbets Field on game day.

In Bette Bao Lord’s classic chapter book In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson, 8-year-old Shirley Temple Wong is a recent Chinese immigrant to Brooklyn and knows little to no English. She takes the name Shirley Temple as her American name and adopts the Brooklyn Dodgers as her home team and Jackie Robinson as her special hero. By listening to the games on the radio, she learns English and eventually becomes at home with her neighbors, her new friends at school, and being what she considered herself to be, “a real American.” Fully the first half of the book follows Shirley’s experiences as an immigrant learning the ways of her new Brooklyn neighborhood. It isn’t until she is invited to play stickball and, through a series of fortuitous events, actually scores a run by stealing home, that the story segues into her devotion to baseball and Jackie Robinson. The other kids start calling her Jackie Robinson, which occasions her teacher to teach her whole class Jackie Robinson’s story and why his story was uniquely American. Of all the books, this one, perhaps more than the others, conveys the spirit of baseball as more than just a game. For Shirley it was a way to be American. For young readers, they get to view the immigrant experience through the eyes of someone their own age. Along the way they will have the extra added attraction of learning about Shirley’s Chinese culture as well.

Baseball Saved Us, by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee, offers another avenue into baseball’s role in our often painful past as it tells the story of a Japanese American boy in an internment camp during World War II. Although this picture book doesn’t address Jackie Robinson, it does address another chapter in our history of discrimination. Publishers Weekly praised its “stylish prose and stirring illustrations.” And a chorus of teachers have praised it. One teacher said she “used it with [her] 6th graders. They were able to relate the text to the current societal issues facing us today.” Another related that she “was eager to read this book because in my early years of teaching I worked with a wonderful man who, as a child, was in one of these internment camps with his family. This story sounded so much like the ones he told of his time in the camps that I felt he could have written it. The illustrations are very well done and will show young children that it was definitely not summer camp.”21 Thus, we find baseball, again, a dynamic catalyst for teaching students about the past in ways they can relate to and understand.

Sharon Robinson’s works are in a class by themselves. By bringing her own personal perspective to Jackie Robinson’s story, she enriches our understanding of not only Jackie’s public journey, but that of his family life. Promises to Keep, How Jackie Robinson Changed America, The Hero Two Doors Down, Jackie’s Nine, Values to Live By, Jackie Robinson: American Hero, and her latest, Child of the Dream work together to show her father as more than the icon celebrated on April 15. In each she adds depth and dimension to his story, his sorrows, trials, values he lived by, and accomplishments in the face of ridicule and worse from people who were still dedicated to a segregated society. In addition to being his daughter, Sharon Robinson brings professional expertise to her writings about her father.

According to her website, “Sharon Robinson is an author and educational consultant for Major League Baseball. As founder and consultant, Sharon, MLB, and Scholastic co-manage Breaking Barriers: In Sports, In Life, a baseball-themed national character-education curriculum designed to empower students to face obstacles in their lives. The program includes a national essay contest for students in grades 4-9 and throughout MLB’s RBI program. Each year thousands of students write an essay about how they used the values demonstrated by Jackie Robinson to overcome their challenges. Essay winners are celebrated in their schools and in major-league ballparks. Since 1997 the program has reached over 34 million students and 4.6 million educators in the continental United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.”22

Promises to Keep is unique as a picture book, as it situates her father in a wide historic timeframe. It begins by tracing the black and white world of Jim Crow and the important Black leaders who moved mountains toward civil rights that made his achievement possible, men and women like Ida B. Wells, W.E.B. DuBois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Langston Hughes. Because of these pioneers, when Jackie Robinson was born in 1919 the world was already beginning with glacier-like speed to change. Robinson makes good use of both vintage newspaper and magazine photographs and news clippings as well as personal ephemera like family photographs, love letters between her mom and dad, and family photographs from his baseball career and civil rights events. Two of its best features are the chapters “A Civil Rights Champion” and “Jackie Robinson’s Legacy.” In these two chapters the reader travels with Jackie as a civil-rights leader and into the future. His work with all of the leaders of the modern civil-rights movement rounds out the fullness of his legacy, leaving that legacy to be carried on after his death in 1972. This picture book stands out because of the richness of its narrative and the scope of the history it covers as it positions Jackie Robinson in the events of the twentieth century. In captivating words and pictures, Robinson chronicles the life of her legendary father. Tracy Bell of the Durham Public Schools, writing for School Library Journal, agrees: “She weaves historical events into the story of one of baseball’s greatest players, revealing how they shaped his life. Her text, combined with numerous black-and-white archival and family photographs, reproductions of newspaper headlines, magazine pages, and letters, illustrates Jackie Robinson’s journey from childhood to the moment that he integrated major-league baseball to his life as a businessman and civil-rights spokesperson. In addition to personal details, this intimate biographical sketch and authentic glimpse into the life of a great African American provides information on the post-Civil War world, race relations, and the struggle for civil rights.”

The Hero Two Doors Down is based on a true story. In 1948, 8-year-old Steven Satlow learns that his new neighbor in his all-Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood is none other than Jackie Robinson, his hero. Booklist calls it “a charming tale” that offers “good fodder for discussion about prejudice, discrimination, friendship, and family.” School Library Journal calls it “a home run.” One parent wasn’t as enthusiastic. Her complaint? Too much history! “The story of what happens with the people gets weighed down with a lot of drag about historic detail that doesn’t help move the plot along. So I thought I’d read it and tell my son the story. I couldn’t get through it. The author uses too many historical facts in the places where she is supposed to be building suspense. And it just takes too long to get to the satisfying parts of the story.” The rest of the reviews, however, echoed the praise from this fourth-grade teacher: “This is a well-written story that’s perfect for 2020. I am a fourth-grade teacher, and I was looking for a new read-aloud. This book just made the top of the list. I read it in one sitting. I loved the themes of friendship, respect, and acceptance. Such a perfect, feel-good book for our society. I can’t wait to read it to my students.”

Sharon Robinson’s latest, Child of the Dream, focuses on the events of 1963, the year she turned 13 and the year she became fully aware of the civil-rights work of her parents. The personal triumphs of her own coming of age set against the worldly events, in particular the March on Washington, makes this a compelling book sure to interest middle-school students. Kirkus Reviews deems it “a lovingly honest memoir of a racial – and social activist – past that really hasn’t passed.” Robinson’s civil-rights activism has often been overshadowed by his baseball career. Child of the Dream will go a long way toward balancing how we view the entirety of his life’s work.

So, what’s the verdict? How is Jackie Robinson’s memory being kept alive in children’s and young adult literature? From the sampling of children’s and young adult literature available today, the legacy of Jackie Robinson is in good hands. His story has been embraced by parents and educators looking for stories that vibrate with life. The fact of the discrimination he faced has led to conversations about discrimination in a variety of settings other than baseball: the discrimination felt by people with hearing loss, the discrimination of the Japanese internment camps, the discrimination felt by recent immigrants. All find something in Jackie’s story that intersects with their own, making Jackie’s story universal. His “after-baseball” story of civil-rights activism opens pathways for today’s students to see their own way forward as the next generation of Americans to strive for the American dream. If there is criticism, it would be that with the notable exceptions discussed above, the books don’t do as much with the “before” story. Much more attention to the national stain of Jim Crow would only make it clearer why Jackie’s story is exceptional. But because all of the books have to grapple to some extent with the “why” of racial discrimination to explain Jackie’s achievements, it forces students, parents, and teachers to grapple with the same issues.

As popular interest in the Negro Leagues and African American history and life continues to grow as evidenced by movies like 42 and The Green Book, the yearly April commemoration of Jackie Robinson’s entry in major-league baseball, and the growing literature about him all will do their part to keep his legacy alive and resonating with future generations yet to come.

Notes

1 Kadir Nelson, We Are the Ship, The Story of Negro League Baseball, (New York: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2008).

2 John Murnane, “Reversing the ‘Disneyfication’ Process,” World History Connected, Vol. 5, No. 1, University of Illinois Press, worldhistoryconnected.press.uillinois.edu/8.1/murnane.html.

3 Russell Contreras (Associated Press), “A look at Minorities in Previous Disney Productions,” AP News, November 29, 2017. apnews.com/article/38a447209d5e4bo6ba17d8c642aob207.

4 ferris.edu/jimcrow/.

5 James Overmyer, Queen of the Negro Leagues: Effa Manley and the Newark Eagles (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1998). Bob Luke, The Most Famous Woman in Baseball, Effa Manley and the Negro Leagues (Washington: Potomac Books, Inc., 2011).

6 August Wilson, Fences (New York: Plume,1986). I’m not suggesting using Fences with young students, just that it’s the clearest example I am aware of of a character expressing their outrage at the injustice of the system.

7 Frank Berrios and Betsy Bauer, illus., My Little Golden Book About Jackie Robinson (New York: Golden Books, 2018).

8 Jim O’Connor and Jim Butcher, illus., Jackie Robinson and the Story of All-Black Baseball (New York: Random House Step Into Reading, 1989).

9 April Jones Prince and Robert Casilla, Jackie Robinson, He Led the Way (New York: Penguin Young Readers, 2008).

10 Sharon Robinson, The Hero Two Doors Down (New York: Scholastic Press, 2016).

11 Sharon Robinson, Child of the Dream (New York: Scholastic Press, 2020).

12 Ken Mochizuki and Dom Lee, illus., Baseball Saved Us (New York: Lee & Low Books, 2009).

13 Bette Bao Lord, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson (New York: HarperCollins, 1984).

14 Myron Uhlberg and Colin Bootman, illus., Dad, Jackie, and Me (Atlanta: Peachtree Publishers, 2005).

15 Sharon Robinson, Promises to Keep (New York: Scholastic Press, 2004).

16 Mary Corey and Mark Harnischfeger, Before Jackie, The Negro Leagues, Civil Rights, and the American Dream, Teacher Edition (Ithaca, New York: Paramount Market Publishing, 2014).

17 Patricia C. McKissack and Fredrick McKissack Jr., Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues, (New York: Scholastic Press, 1998). See also Jim O’Connor and Jim Butcher.

18 There Was Always Sun Shining Someplace, Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues, Craig Davidson, director, narrated by James Earl Jones, 1984.

19 All referenced reviews can be found on the Amazon website for each of the books mentioned. Professional reviews cite the journal that published the review but many are from readers identified only by a first name. The two most common professional reviews are available in print and on the websites of School Library Journal, slj.com, and The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books, bccb.ischool.illinois.edu.Kirkus Reviews are also published on Amazon and can also be found in print and on their website at kirkusreviews.com/. Professional reviews from these reviewers can also be found on the website of Barnes & Noble, with no substantive deviation from those published on Amazon. For the sake of convenience, I stayed with Amazon for reviews.

20 The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books.

21 Review of Baseball Saved Us, smile.amazon.com/Baseball-Saved-Us-Ken-Mochizuki/dp/1880000199/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8.

22 sharonrobinsonink.com/about-sharon-robinson.