When Willard Met Babe Ruth

by Donald Hall

Book Overview

It is 1917 in rural New Hampshire when twelve-year-old Willard Babson and his father see a roadster slide into a ditch in front of them. "You know anybody can pull me out of here?" asks the tall young... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0152002731
• ISBN13: 9780152002732
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Browndeer Press
• Length: 41 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 7.4" x 9.3"
• Age Range: 7 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 2 and higher

Customer Reviews

Great book for kids

My 8 year old son, who normally hates to sit down and read, actually sat down and read this book cover to cover in one sitting. He is a big Babe Ruth fan, which I'm sure helped, but I would definitely recommend this book for any baseball fan.

A HOMER FOR YOUNG READERS

Master woodcutter Moser's brilliantly conceived watercolors recreate rural New Hampshire in 1917. It was a simpler time, when there was a baseball game between the single men and the married men. For young Willard Babson the game and ice cream were the highlights of his day. When Willard and his father come upon a roadster that had slid into a ditch, the boy was amazed to find the driver was the most outstanding left-hander in baseball - Babe Ruth.

A REAL Field of Dreams: Excellent Baseball Story

This book is as leisurely paced as a day at the ballpark, with the same quality of time passing yet standing still. It traces three generations of baseball fans, growing with the game, and their encounters with George Herman "Babe" Ruth. Baseball changes more slowly than the events around it: war, the Depression, marriage, birth, technology. The love of baseball is transmitted from father to son to granddaughter, and it is in that slow but certain transmission that the author conveys the beauty of the game. No other sport treasures its history so much. No other major sport is so unconstrained (at least, theoretically) by time.Donald Hall has written an unhurried look at baseball, growth, and decline. We meet the young Babe Ruth as a star southpaw for the Red Sox, then follow (with the New Hampshire family portrayed here) repeated years of father-son baseball games, rooting for the Babe as he keeps breaking his own home run record, and then, briefly, the Babe's last, uncompleted year in baseball. Between the lines we see the dimmest outlines of a flawed man. The book is both a sentimental evocation of a New England family's enchantment with baseball, and an unstudied meditation on the passage of time.Of course, the above is from an adult perspective. Elementary school kids (and older) will enjoy the depiction of times past, the two encounters with the young and the older Babe, and, most of all, the outstanding illustrations by Barry Moser. Like baseball, it can seem a little slow, but if you have the time and the inclination, the book will envelop you like an old familiar glove.

It was a great book. I read it three times.

It is 1917 on the Fourth of July in Wilmont Flat in New Hampshire. The characters in the story are Willard,his dad,his mother,Babe Ruth,and Sheridian. Babe Ruth comes to Willard's house and gives him his glove. Willard loves Babe Ruth and goes to all of his games. Willard grows up and has a daughter. Willard works for the Boston Post and writes about sports.