Blockade Billy by Stephen King

From the jacket: “Even the most diehard baseball fans don’t know the true story of William “Blockade Billy” Blakely. He may have been the greatest player the game has ever seen, but today no one remembers his name. He was the first — and only — player to have his existence completely removed from the record books. Even his team is long forgotten, barely a footnote in the game’s history.”

My take: Doesn’t that teaser just make you want to run out and pick up a copy?

The world’s creepiest writer (and unabashed baseball fan) chronicles in this novella the uncensored reminiscences of the former third base coach and equipment manager of the New Jersey Titans, who looks back at the brief but lurid career of their 1957 catcher, William Blakely, better known as “Blockade Billy.”

Due to back-to-back crises involving their first-string and backup catchers during spring training, the team was forced to call up Blakely from the minors. George “Granny” Grantham met him at the ballpark the morning of Opening Day to get him set up and to keep him from running back to the Iowa farm he’d driven in from when he realized the enormity of the task before him. But from his arrival, Blakely exuded a quiet confidence in his ability to play in the Majors.

And he did. He caught perfectly well. He hit safely in 22 straight games. And, as his nickname suggests, he protected the plate like no one’s business. Unafraid of a collision, he put his shoulder down and sent several players who mistakenly thought they could shove past him flying through the air. For roughly a month, Blakely was flying high. Or so everyone thought…

Granny, through King, tells a convincing story of when baseball was still undisputedly America’s favorite pastime and when its players were cut from a coarser cloth.*

Pages: 112

*I wanted to share a couple other things, but they didn’t fit in smoothly up above: 1) Despite having the King name attached, this was not a horror novel. Older elementary school kids would be perfectly fine reading it for content (and it, in fact, reminds me slightly of a couple of books that made the rounds when I was in fourth grade). However, the salty language makes this a better match for older teens or adults, at least those comfortable with locker room talk. 2) This is really more of a long short story, even, than a novella, as the book’s footprint is small and the type is large. It will take the average reader less than an afternoon to read it. I suggest putting it aside for a prolonged rain delay. 3) My favorite part of the book may have been where Granny (and King) call out George Will on his economic interpretation of baseball. Yes, I am a nerd, why did you ask?

This week’s Booking through Thursday asks:

What is the first book you remember reading? What about the first that made you really love reading?

Is it wrong that I don’t know the answer to these questions? I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know how to read, although my grandmother assures me that one winter she and my grandfather left for Florida with me not knowing how to read and came back two or so months later and I did. Plus, obviously I didn’t just come out of the womb with a book in my hand, although if I had it most certainly would have explained the wait I caused my parents: “Just a few more minutes. I’ll be born when I finish this chapter!”

I’d like to say my first book could have been one by Richard Scarry, although those probably came later with my brother. Certainly I was quite taken with Scarry’s Please and Thank You Book when I was five or so and still cite it as a favorite. We had Little Golden Books, so it could have been one of those. Or maybe An Invitation to the Butterfly Ball? — I recall its beautiful pictures. That scratch-and-sniff Winnie the Pooh book? A Babar story? Curious George? Mum? Dad? Any recollection?

I do recall being in first grade and being quite smitten by Snow White and Rose Red in my elementary school library. It was on the shelf by the door where the Beatrix Potter books were kept and was roughly the same size. That was probably the first book I checked out on several separate occasions (and, to this day, one of the few) just because I liked the story so much.

And I know that I really felt that my brother ought to get started on his reading while he was still quite young. The physically smallest book we owned was a copy of Rosemary Wells’ Noisy Nora, and I routinely would interrupt Josh’s playing to try and walk him through the words on the pages. It was not a success and probably helped put him off reading for many years.

(In retrospect, I probably would have been better off with Richard Scarry’s Cars and Trucks and Things that Go instead of a book about a girl mouse who found her baby brother annoying. (In all fairness, she found her older sister a pain, too.))

How about you? What books helped give you your first foray into reading? Share with us in the comments…

Yesterday I was responsible and returned some things to my local library before I owed them money. Yes, they were confused, too.

I was hoping to pick up a book I’d just heard about over the weekend and that the website suggested could be found at my local branch, but it was nowhere to be found. Obviously I couldn’t harass each patron to demand that they hand over the novel I wanted, so instead I picked up some other, more spontaneous choices:

• Blockade Billy by Stephen King — A baseball novella that will be, I believe, my first King ever. (God, I hope it’s not too scary!)
• Heat by Mike Lupica — I didn’t have any of the other kids’ books on my to-be-read list written down but remembered there was a sports book on it. As it turns out, this isn’t it, but I’m still looking forward to reading this baseball book from a Connecticut writer.
• Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson — This novel has been on my radar since my friend Erik wrote me about it back, oh, probably last winter. I’m eager to start it. Maybe this weekend…
• The Last Olympian by Percy Jackson — I was torn. I thought about re-reading the first four novels in this series before picking up the final one, but then I remembered this was the first time I’d seen Book 5 at the library since it came out last year and quickly added it to my pile.

I still have a few other books out from an earlier library jaunt, so expect a few more book reports as this week goes on.

The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy, by Jeanne Birdsall

From the jacket: “Meet the Penderwicks, four different sisters with one special bond. There’s responsible, practical Rosalind; stubborn, feisty Skye; dreamy, artistic Jane; and shy little sister Batty, who won’t go anywhere without her butterfly wings. When the girls and their doting father head off for their summer holiday, they are in for a surprise. Instead of the cozy, tumbledown cottage they expected, they find themselves on a beautiful estate called Arundel. Soon the girls are busy discovering the summertime magic of Arundel’s sprawling gardens, treasure-filled attic, tame rabbits, and the cook who makes the best gingerbread in Massachusetts. But the most wonderful discovery of all is Jeffrey Tifton, son of Arundel’s owner, who quickly proves to be the perfect companion for their adventures.”

My take: I read the first chapter of this novel last summer whiling away time before meeting a friend and have been meaning to get back to it for a year. When it appeared on the list of 100 children’s books not to miss, it was an early and easy selection for getting caught up.

Written in the same vein as Edward Eager’s and Edith Nesbit’s series, The Penderwicks takes a family of children, plunks them in a foreign situation, and gives them a period of mostly adult-free time in which to sort out the world around them.

The story opens as the girls, their father, and faithful Hound try to locate their summer rental. After several wrong turns, they discover they’ve booked a spacious “cottage” that gives each girl her own room on an old estate’s property. The land is owned by Mrs. Tifton, a stuffy, overprotective woman who objects to children tromping through her prized garden and who certainly does not want her darling son, Jeffrey, interacting with the riff-raff tenants. Jeffrey and the girls, however, have other ideas, which makes for a fun romp of a summer for all of them.

Although this particular book is magic-free (unlike the Nesbit and Eager books mentioned above), the tale hearkens back to a period of time when kids were able to spend time entertaining themselves without parents over-scheduling and overseeing every movement. The story is clearly not written in the here and now, as no cell phones interrupt the peace of a country summer, but laptops exist, so I’d probably place it roughly in roughly the mid-1990s.

I found the book charming and can fully understand why it was awarded the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature.

Pages: 262

It’s time to summarize the books I read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.

In addition to what’s listed below, I read several books I originally thought would fit into this challenge but which, on reflection, did not. As such, I merely completed Quest the First to “read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time IV criteria.” The six books I read were:

• The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda (fairy tale)
• The Necromancer (mythology)
• Queen Zixi of Ix (fairy tale)
• The Red Pyramid (mythology) (review TK)
• Savvy (folk tale)
• The Sorceress (mythology)

While I liked all of the books I read, I’d have to say that the highlight was the first one I read, Savvy. I’d recommend it for anyone.

My other goal for the challenge was to re-read A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I made it partway through the play within the early June time frame, but ultimately failed to finish before the Solstice.

As always, this was a fun read-along and one I’ll be doing again next spring.

The Collected Tales of Nurse Matilda, by Christianna Brand

From the jacket: “Once upon a time there was a huge family of children; and they were terribly, terribly naughty…”

My take: After the large and ever-growing brood of Brown children terrorize their nannies, tutors, nurses, governesses, and maids with their horrible behavior (although their mother believes them to be misunderstood angels), the help quits en masse, declaring that only Nurse Matilda could sort out those children. Every staffing agency in town agrees — there’s no one left to help, but Nurse Matilda.

And, oh! Nurse Matilda is quite a handful herself. Only able to work where she’s needed but not wanted, she’s dressed in dour clothing, is ugly with a nose like a potato and a snaggle-tooth, and carries a big black stick. And woe to those misbehaving when Nurse Matilda bangs her stick on the floor. The miscreant might find him- or herself unable to stop doing the same awful thing, no matter how much he or she might want to. Or if you were pretending to be sick, you might legitimately start to be ill and have to go into the hospital. Somehow, the fear of the fate that big black stick might force upon you might make you rethink your behavior, at least for a minute.

Slowly, the children go from willfully being as bad as can be (bordering on malevolent) to periodically misbehaving to eventually understanding how to avoid getting into trouble in the first place. And as they make this transition, it occurs to them that Nurse Matilda is looking less and less ugly…

This particular book included all three of the Nurse Matilda fairy tales originally published in the 1960s and ’70s, which provided the (loose) source material of the 2005 film Nanny McPhee.

While I liked the stories well enough, I did feel that putting them all together in one volume probably diminished their effect as all three are quite similar in both scope and execution. Cute enough to read through to the end, but I certainly wouldn’t do more than take it out of the library if you’re curious about it.

Pages: 300

This is one of the books I read for the Once Upon a Time Challenge.