Baseball Saved Us

Baseball Saved Us

Mochizuki, K. (1993). Baseball saved us. NY: Lee and Low.

This picture book which is also multicultural was fascinating! The author’s note before the first page sets up the reader for understanding about the time period. During World War Two, after Pearl Harbor, the United States was at war with Japan. America moved all people of Japanese decent away from the West Coast into internment camps in the middle of American deserts until 1945.

                If this book did not have any pictures, the story would not have been able to fully reach the reader in what the camps were really like for these people. The colors of the pictures I believe are important for the story. While the family is in the camp, the colors are dark and rough looking to set the mood. Once they are released from the camp the colors are still dark and rough. Their lives were changed and still rough even after they were released from the camps. I think it is important to show students how even after the camps Japanese descendants still had a hard life just because of the way they looked. The one picture that has softer and lighter colors is at the end. The child overcomes the name calling and judgments to hit the ball close or over the fence of the opposing team! The blue skies and green grass help the mood for the reader to be excited for the child.

                I really enjoyed the page layout for the book. A picture usually took one page or slightly more. Twice when the author relates what happened in the baseball game in the camp with the baseball game outside of the camp, the pictures and text were exactly alike. Words to set up what was happening, and pictures that felt like a movie film strip. Still pictures one after another to show what was happening.

                I felt like this story would be a great multicultural book to teach or read to students because it takes place in America. I think students often think that multicultural is culture around the world that is different than their own. Our own country is full of different cultures and events that we may not focus on as much. I know in middle school and high school I learned about World War One and Two and Jewish people who were placed in camps, but we never focused on what America did to our own people. This book would help bridge that gap and start discussions about this topic. As I was reading I thought about how I would use the post-its as a comprehension strategy. I think students would mark words like “internment camps”, “Japs”, and “descent”.

Big Questions: Why does the author make a point for the narrator to keep mentioning the guard in the tower? How does the narrator correlate the guard in the tower to the pitcher of the opposing team once he is out of the camp? How would you feel if your own country put you into a camp?