Game 1 (Barnstormers Series #1)

Griffith, Graham, and Ruby's father passed away in the war. And now they must join their mother and their father's wartime traveling baseball team, The Travelin' Nine, on a tour of America to raise money. No one will tell the kids why the team needs money so badly. Their only clue is a baseball with a hole the size of an acorn in it that their Uncle Owen gave to them the night of their father's funeral. They know very little about its significance except that their father made it with his own two hands and carried it with him throughout the war. And when all three kids hold the ball, strange things begin to happen...

Publishers Weekly

The authors nimbly step up to the plate in this debut volume of Barnstormers: Tales of the Travelin' Nine series, but the action plays out rather disappointingly. In 1899, likable siblings Griffith, Ruby and Graham Payne are on the road with a barnstorming baseball team. Their father, once the Travelin' Nine's catcher, perished at war and their mother, disguised as a man, has taken his place behind home plate. The children cherish the baseball that their father carried throughout the war. At the start of the team's game against the Cincinnati Swine (aka Porkopolis, "the pork-packin' capital of the world"), the worn ball mysteriously seems to "tremble" in Ruby's hand. As the Nine loses the lead in the game, a "looming darkness" descends on the field. A train switching signal grows out of the ground, tracks and a locomotive appear seen only by the siblings and their teammates, who lose badly. At game's end, Griffith shares with Ruby their uncle's warning, confided at their father's funeral, that "great danger lies ahead." Like this season's Hey Batta, Batta Swing(reviewed Jan. 8), this brief novel throws out appealing old-time baseball vernacular (defined in the margins) and intriguing period particulars, captured in Loren's enticing backdrops; youngsters will also enjoy the emotional portraits of the Payne family. But the danger remains a mystery as the tale comes to a close, with too much left dangling. Ages 7-10. (Feb.)

#1 New York Times Best Seller LOREN LONG’s illustrations have received two gold medals from the Society of Illustrators and his first picture book, Angela Johnson’s I Dream of Trains, won the Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Award for Illustrations and his inspired interpretation of Walt Whitman’s When I Heard Learn’d Astronomer was a Golden Kite Honor. A much sought after editorial artist whose work has appeared in Times, Sports Illustrated, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal and Atlantic Monthly, Loren is widely known for the illustrations in Madonna’s #1 New York Times Best Seller Mr. Peabody’s Apples. And Watty Piper’s The Little Engine That Could. He lives in West Chester, Ohio, with his wife, Tracy, and two young sons, Griffith and Graham.

Phil Bildner is the author of the New York Times bestselling Sluggers! series, the Texas Bluebonnet Award-winning Shoeless Joe & Black Betsy and its companion, The Shot Heard 'Round the World, both illustrated by C. F. Payne; and Twenty-One Elephants, illustrated by LeUyen Pham. His latest picture book is Turkey Bowl, illustrated by C.F Payne. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.