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Library | Call Number | Material Type | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Searching... State Library of Oregon | 813.54 WolffB | 4-Week Loan | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Told in the alternating voices of a cast of twenty girls, COMMUNITY SERVICE traces nine months in the life of two small towns in Oregon in 1948-49. The sixth grade girls of Bear Creek Ridge and Barlow traditionally play a softball game against each other each spring, called Bat 6. This year, Trout Creek Ridge reclaims Aki Yakamoto to its team. Aki and her family have been interned by the US government since 1942; both native and foreigner, Aki is welcomed by some but resented silently by others. Barlow has a real newcomer to its own sixth-grade: a girl who calls herself Shazam, with the best pitching arm either town has ever seen. Neglected by her mother, needy and angry, Shazam idealizes her dead father, who was killed at Pearl Harbor. During the months of preparation that lead up to the game, one potentially dangerous situation after another is defused by the community, which prides itself on its American virtues of hard work, forebearance, and stoicism. But nothing can defuse the tensions at Bat 6, which explode the artificial morality of Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge in a shattering and shocking way.
Summary:
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-Virginia Euwer Wolff's story (Scholastic, 1998) about a sixth-grade girl's softball team set in the post-war 1940's is even better to listen to than it is to read. Barlow and Bear Creek Ridge have been playing softball against each other for 50 years. This year brings tragedy for both teams when Aki, a Japanese-American on the Ridgers Team, and Shazam, who lost her father at Pearl Harbor and who plays for the Barlow Team, meet each other on the playing field. The ten voices on this full-cast production make listeners feel like they are hearing the girls tell their own story. Aural quality is good, and the different voices can be identified easily. An excellent addition to any collection.-Saleena L. Davidson, South Brunswick Public Library, NJ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Wolff's (Make Lemonade) ambitious but ultimately unsuccessful novel explores prejudice via a baseball game between the sixth grade girls of Bear Creek Ridge and Barlow Road Grade Schools on May 28, 1949. "Now that it's over, we are telling. We voted to, it's fairer than not," begins Tootie, the catcher for Bear Creek Ridge, in what appears to be the start of a series of flashback testimonials. But not all of the 21 girls' accounts adhere to this format, and readers never discover whom the girls are addressing. Some of the characters speak only a few times, and since readers never get to know them, their voices run together in a miscellany. The actual conflictwhen Shazam, whose father died at Pearl Harbor, in a run to first base, assaults Aki, the Japanese first basemanoccurs more than halfway through the book. The most distinct voices belong to Shazam (who speaks in a stream-of-consciousness style, "Sneaky Japs never warned nobody they snuck behind our backs dropped bombs right in my fathers ship the Arizona he was down in it without no warning") and to Aki, whose perspective is markedly different from the other girls'. Shazam exposes much of her troubled background through her narratives, and Aki reveals some fascinating cultural details as well as provides insight into life in an internment camp. However, because readers are only acquainted with the two through a few lengthy accounts interspersed among the other 19 girls, the change in both of them (especially in Shazam) at story's end seems sudden and hollow. While readers cannot help but admire the stalwart Aki, they will likely walk away from this book trying to make sense of who these characters were and what they were trying to say. Ages 10-13. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
During a sixth-grade girls' softball game in 1949, a deeply troubled girl whose father was killed at Pearl Harbor attacks a Japanese-American girl whose family was interned. The brief first person retrospective accounts from all twenty-one girls on both teams sometimes make it difficult to distinguish one voice from another. But Wolff's evocation of period and place is masterful, and the questions she raises about war, race, and cherished beliefs are difficult and honest. From HORN BOOK Fall 1998, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
In Bear Creek Ridge and Barlow, two small Oregon towns, everyone is looking forward to the Bat 6 girls' softball game of 1949. Both towns make plans to cheer the sixth graders on, all in the name of good, clean fun. This simple, small-town portrait of Americana is shattered, however, when a racial incident occurs at the 50th annual game: One player, Shirley, whose father was killed at Pearl Harbor, slams her elbow into the face of Aki, a Japanese-American. It brings the game to a halt, and inspires the townspeople to debate and examine what exactly has gone wrong in the years since WW II ended. Guilt hangs over both towns: Could anyone have prevented the incident? Shirley had not concealed her hatred of ``Japs,'' yet no one had believed that such a troubled girl would act on her feelings. Through the first-person narrations of the 21 girls of the two teams, the story emerges, and while few of the voices are truly distinct, their emotions and perspectives ring true. Wolff (Make Lemonade, 1993, etc.) is especially deft in creating a transforming, bittersweet post-war atmosphere and winning portraits of members of the communities who support, respect, and encourage their young girls, but come to question their own roles in the tragedy. (Fiction. 12-14)
Booklist Review
Gr. 5^-9. Shazam's father died at Pearl Harbor, and she hates the Japanese. Aki was interned in the camps with her family. In 1948 the two girls meet on a softball field in competing sixth-grade teams. See starred review, p.1517. YA Talk
