Baseball Saved Us

A: Baseball Saved Us
B: Ken Mochizuki
C: Dom Lee E:Lee & Low books
F: Historical Fiction, Multicultural, Picture Book
G: K-3

This was a book, written for the perspective of a child, that was about how the Japanese were forced to live in internment camps after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. In the book he describes how life was before they went to the camp, which was not good at all, and then how it was in the camp and it ended talking about what life was like after they had returned from the camps. The only source of entertainment they had was a baseball field that the boys father built.

I was doubtful at first when i picked up the book, but I had no idea what it was about. It reminded me a lot of what we have read of Weedflower. The similarities in the two is striking, the details are almost exactly the same. It also reminded me of Aleutian Sparrow, although they were a different race and ethnicity the same thing happened to both of these people, they were persecuted for things that were not true and totally unfair. Once I started to read the book I really enjoyed it, even though the topic is a bit on the depressing side. I really liked how the father had the idea to build the baseball field so that everyone could have something to enjoy and occupy their time. The boy seemed to be as optimistic as possible which I thought was a really good character trait. The majority of the pictures were single page including the panel type illustrations. I read on the copyright pay how the illustrations were done and it blew my mind. It from beeswax that was scratch out and the oil.

One connection that could be made is to talk to the students about fairness and treating others like equals. It would be perfect the use when talking about Japan and the Japanese people, it could follow, or proceed, reading Weedflower. They complement each other well, for younger children they probably would not be able to understand all of Weedflower but they would be able to grasp the concepts of Baseball Saved Us. You could talk about how there is a difference is sides of everything that happens, including World War 2. Another thing that would work well is trying to simulate what happened to the Japanese in the classroom, could be interesting.