Casey At the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 (Caldecott Honor Book)

Bill Ott (Booklist, Feb. 15, 2001 (Vol. 97, No. 12)) First-time children's book illustrator Bing's take on Casey at the Bat represents, above all, a stunning example of contemporary bookmaking in which the most sophisticated electronic techniques have been used to re-create the past. The text is

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presented as a "newly discovered," 100-year-old scrapbook into which newspaper articles, including Thayer's poem and other memorabilia, have been pasted, recording not only the events of the day--Casey's ninth-inning strikeout and the Mudville nine's four-to-two defeat--but also a broader view of the baseball world in 1888. The poem is illustrated in two-page spreads in which Bing's scratchboard drawings effectively capture the look of engravings used in newspapers of the period. Imposed over the drawings are fictional clippings that amplify issues suggested in the text (on the spread where Jimmy Blake "tears the cover off the ball," an editorial decries the practice of using only one ball throughout a game). Elsewhere, the illustrations depict a black player, and the clipping concerns the soon-to-be-instituted color line. (As with all the fictional clippings, this reference to baseball before the color line is historically accurate.) There is a phenomenal amount of information on baseball history compacted into this fascinating format, and the juxtaposition of memorabilia to text is unfailingly, even exhaustingly, clever (a newspaper ad for "bronchial troches" to cure hoarseness appears alongside the lines "Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell"). As with so many recent tour-de-force picture books, however, questions linger about the audience. For all its brilliance and bravura, this is a far less kid-friendly Casey than Gerald Fitzgerald's 1995 version. Adults, of course, will marvel at the bookmaking and relish the arcane information, but they may meet a fate similar to Casey's when they try to pass on their enthusiasm to their young children. Category: Books for the Young--Nonfiction. 2000, Handprint, $17.95. Ages 5-8.

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