Babe Ruth and the Baseball Curse (Totally True Adventures)

by David A. Kelly, Tim Jessell (Illustrator)

Overview

Before 1918, the Boston Red Sox were unstoppable. They won World Series after World Series, thanks in part to their charismatic pitcher-slugger Babe Ruth. But some people on the Red Sox felt the Babe was more trouble than he was worth, and he was traded away to one of the worst teams in baseball, the New York Yankees. From then on, the Yankees became a golden team. And the Red Sox? For over 80 years, they just couldn’t win another World Series. Then, in 2004, along came a scruffy, scrappy Red Sox team. Could they break Babe Ruth’s curse and win it all?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780375856037
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	02/24/2009
Series:	Totally True Adventures: A Stepping Stone Book (TM)
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.40(h) x 0.40(d)
Lexile:	650L (what's this?)
Age Range:	7 - 10 Years

About the Author

David A. Kelly is a lifelong baseball—and Red Sox—fan. Babe Ruth and the Baseball Curse is his first book. He lives in West Newton, Massachusetts.

Tim Jessell’s art can be seen in many children’s books, including the popular Secret of Droon series. For the Random House list, he illustrated Two Hot Dogs with Everything and the covers for Crossroads and Raleigh’s Page. He lives in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 3–6—While this book is in part a biography, it mainly covers the history of the "Curse of the Bambino." This superstition dates back to the year that the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees, and many Boston fans believe it is the reason for the team's poor showing in the World Series. The book provides a modern context by describing the heartbreaking loss of the Sox to the Yankees in 2003. It goes on to give a brief but balanced account of the life of Babe Ruth, including some of the unsavory aspects of his behavior and personality. Kelly ends on a happy note, with the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series. The theme of luck, both good and bad, runs throughout the tale. Play-by-play descriptions of important games will keep baseball fanatics reading to the end.—Kathleen Meulen, Sakai Intermediate School, Bainbridge Island, WA

School Library Journal

Two nonfiction baseball stories enclosed in one cover should be a winner for newly established readers who are baseball fanatics-unfortunately, it's not. The first is a thin sketch of the life of The Babe, the Bambino, George Herman Ruth, bad boy turned national hero, a figure larger than life. Too thin, alas: The Babe was so outsized, so personable, so human, and not enough of that comes through in this. The second story is the sad tale of the fall of the Boston Red Sox after The Babe was sold to the hated New York Yankees. Following that fateful event, Boston was in decline for decades as New York was in ascendancy. It's an exciting story, but Kelly's writing is flat, dependent on exclamation points and forms of "to get" instead of strong, chewy verbs-lazy and inexcusable writing in a book meant for developing readers. Furthermore, even as the book appears on shelves it is outdated, making no mention of Barry Bonds or of the Red Sox's ignominious defeat in 2008. Too bad. (Nonfiction. 6-9)

Kirkus Reviews