Keeping Score

In Keeping Score, Linda Sue Park again gives us an opportunity to really feel what it was like to be a particular kid in a particular place and time quite different from our own. In Maggie-O's mid-twentieth century New York, the technology was different, but the kids still had problems that today's kids can relate to. Baseball without TV or the Internet -- just imagine! Maggie tunes in to the game by listening to radios through open windows while walking through the neighborhood. She shares the ups and downs of her favorite team with the whole community. Her baseball experience includes no visuals at all except the black-and-white photos in the morning paper. When Maggie-O first lays eyes on that field we are right there with her, seeing what she sees (GREEN!) and feeling what she feels. Her obsession with score keeping, her magical thinking and superstitions are quirky but quite age appropriate, and her growth through disillusionment seems quite genuine. Maggie's experience of the effect of the Korean War on her friend Jim will give today's kids a peak at some of the difficulties facing our own soldiers today. Here's a book that is serious and intelligent, but tremendously engaging. It's a great choice for preteens who like to see how the world looks through someone else's eyes, even if they couldn't care less about baseball. I think this wonderful story also has cross-generational appeal--giving parents a glimpse into the universal experience of tweener angst and giving sixty-somethings a chance to rekindle memories from their younger days. Another home run for Ms. Park! Janet Gingold author of Danger, Long Division

Here is a baseball book that appeals to both boys and girls and to kids who may not know a walk from a balk or what team Willie Mays played on. Willie Mays plays a central role in this novel set in Brooklyn in the early 1950s. He was a New York Giant then and, amazingly, the favorite player of young Maggie Fortini. Amazing, because Maggie lives, breathes and suffers with her hometown Dodgers, and the Giants are their archrivals (still are, in fact). Maggie's brother Joey-Mick tells her she has to have a Dodger as her favorite. "Besides, it's double-stupid to pick a player from your worst-enemy team." But her buddy at the firehouse, Jim, is a Giants fan. Jim teaches Maggie to keep score while listening to Giants games during Willie Mays' breakout rookie season. Keeping score makes Maggie feel as if she has some control over the progress and outcome of a baseball game. She also uses that skill to "keep score" of the Korean war after Jim is drafted and then stops sending letters home to Maggie. Linda Sue Park does an excellent job implying that Jim is suffering from PTSD, a disorder not recognized in the '50s but familiar to kids who know about veterans from our current wars. Resourceful as ever, Maggie cooks up a scheme and saves all her money to pull Jim out of his funk and get her family and friends to a Dodgers-Giants game. She isn't entirely successful, but she doesn't strike out either. Maggie-O is a believable, eminently likable character with a good heart and who knows her game. [Review originally appeared in the Palo Alto Weekly, 7/9/08]

Of me and my sis -- growing up in the Bronx in the 1950's. I was personality-wise, something like Maggie (but I could not work a scorecard) and Sis was a little like Joey-Mick Sis was a Brooklyn Dodger Fan-atic. Like Maggie, Sis kept METICULOUS score sheets of their games. For the life of me, I (a YANKEE FAN) tried but could not master that system of keeping score -- but then again I was having WAAAY more fun, going outside and playing baseball like a maniac (I am a GOIL) -- AND one of the big guys who lived across my stoop usta be a New York Yankees Pitcher!!! What a wonderful life for a skinny little kid (me) growing up in the Bronx!! Sis threw a fit, just like Joey-Mick-- when I named my tiny little kitten (whom I'd gently carry thru the apartment in the palm of my hand) "Pee Wee" -- ("I KNOW You named her after Pee Wee Reese!!!" screamed Sis, indignantly. Well, no I didn't) Anyway -- these personal memories kept cropping up as I read through Linda Sue Park's excellent book -- And, when I read of Maggie's scrupulous conscience (LOL!)) oh how that reminded me of myself, as I was "fine-tuning" my way thru the world, as a child becoming a teen-ager. Seems like Maggie was a very thoughtful introspective and tough little kid -- but hey Maggie if you had just picked up a bat and hit a few fungoes to the outfield- I think you woulda gotten hooked. Linda Sue Parks takes the stuff legends are made of and weaves them into the life of a little girl, Maggie (named after Joe Dimaggio by her dad), an ardent Brookly nDodgers fan. Women's baseball teams of the 1940's, The Brooklyn Dodger ("Da Bums" as they wuz affectionaly called), the Yankees, the great neighborhoods of Brooklyn (each one a world unto itself) and their equally memorable denizens come to life through Maggie's eyes and experiences. Sal Maglie, Duke Snider, Raplph Branca, Jackie Robinson -- Say Hey Wille Mays -- those legendary players come back to life in this book, and once again thrill us with their love of the game, and I saw them thru the eyes of a 13 yr old -- me -- in the same way as Maggie would view their heroic exploits. Linda Sue Parks enthralls the reader with the true stories of the agony and ecstasy of those magic years of the early to mid 50's when the Brooklyn Dodgers came so close to grabbing that GOlden Fleece (winning the World Series), and how this impacted Maggie and her friends at the firehouse who listen spellbound to each Dodger game on the radio (and Mel Barber's mellifluous voice -- how can I ever forget that voice?!!). The part about the radios tuned into the game thoughout the neighborhood, so Maggie could hear the games, even though she was running errands for her mom and Dad -- is So very true!!! Yes that DID happen -- the play by play from those radios (being played in every mom and pop store) and those cheers echoing down the street was the next best thing to Actually Being There!!! And I (sadly!!!) remember walking past my Bronx neighborhood candy sto

This heartfelt, endearing, nostalgic and educational tale is set in Brooklyn, New York in July 1951. The main character is Maggie Fortini who is nine going on ten years-old. She is known to everyone as Maggie-o and her older brother is known as Joey-Mick, both being named after their Father's favorite New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio. But here's the "rub": Maggie-o, Joey-Mick, and their Mom, absolutely love and "live-and die" with the Brooklyn Dodgers! "DEM BUMS" as all Brooklyn fans affectionately called their beloved Dodgers, were the center of their lives. Their entire neighborhood regardless of race, creed, color, or sex, shared their mutual love of the Dodgers in the same manner as "O-positive" blood was a universal donor in an emergency room. Whenever there was a Dodger game being played, the radio in Maggie-o's house was always turned on with Red Barber (and later on Vince Scully) providing the play by play with such favorite phrases as: "a can of corn" for an easy pop fly, and "sitting in the catbird's seat" when "DEM BUMS" had a good lead. It was an unspoken rule in the house that if Mr. Fortini wanted to listen to a big Yankee game he had to go somewhere else. If Maggie-o had to leave the house to go to school, or go to the store, or go to the firehouse, while a game was on, she never missed a pitch as long as she was in the neighborhood. Every house and every store she passed had the Dodger game on and it was like stereo coming from all the windows. Maggie-o's Father had been a fireman until he suffered a bad leg injury fighting a fire. Now he worked in an administrative position at another location. His old firehouse was just down the block and Maggie-o spent countless hours there with the firemen and their dog Chalky. During baseball season the men would sit outside and listen to the Dodger games and Maggie-o would always join them when she wasn't in school. There was nothing but Dodger fans at the firehouse until one day there was a new recruit named Jim Maine who was a Giant fan. The other firemen wouldn't let Jim listen to the Giant games loud, so at times he would lay on the floor next to his radio. Maggie-o befriended Jim or it could just have easily been the other way around, and before you knew it, Jim was teaching Maggie-o the official way to keep play-by-play score of a baseball game. Maggie-o started keeping "official" scorecards of every inning of every game when she wasn't in school. Jim even taught her how to keep track of every ball and every strike, even differentiating between called strikes and swinging strikes. This was the point in time of the Korean War/Conflict, and bad news hit the firehouse when Jim received his draft notice and had to report for active duty. Maggie-o immediately started writing letters, even before his ship crossed the ocean to Korea. Jim started writing back for awhile, and then all of a sudden he stopped. Maggie-o was distraught and couldn't find out why Jim had stopped writing. She then put

Keeping Score is the very best kind of historical novel - one that first introduces kids to funny, dynamic characters they'll love and then brings in historical elements that are so much more meaningful as they affect the lives of those characters. Ten-year-old Maggie Fortini loves the Brooklyn Dodgers. Loves them with a big, fat capital L. When Jim, a pal at her dad's firehouse, teaches her how to keep score, she finds a way to be an even better fan and believes she's helping the team when she keeps track of every play. But as Maggie cheers the Dodgers in the early 1950s, the Korean conflict rages overseas. The war that isn't called a war comes crashing into Maggie's life. Knowing Park's work, knowing that she's a Newbery Medalist, I expected this book to be fantastic. Still, there were some passages that took my breath away, some that made me cry, and some that made me feel like I'm missing out on something spiritual because I'm not much of a baseball fan. Readers will feel like they've moved right into 1950s Brooklyn. Keeping Score does for the Korean War what Gary Schmidt's The Wednesday Wars does for Vietnam - contextualizes it through a funny, poignant story of life on the home front, told from a young person's point of view. This is a perfect book for baseball fans,but you don't have to be a baseball fan to love this one. Like so many great kids' books, baseball may be the hook, but there's so much more here. Keeping Score is full of colorful characters, like George at the firehouse, who shares his roast beef sandwiches with Maggie, her dad, who worries about crowd control, and her mom, who prays for the Dodgers while she knits. It's about baseball, but it's also about family and friends and war. Most, though, Keeping Score is about holding on to hope - something that old-time Dodgers fans knew all about.