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Keeping Score Linda Sue Park 9780618927999 Books

Download As PDF : Keeping Score Linda Sue Park 9780618927999 Books

Keeping Score Linda Sue Park 9780618927999 Books

With overtones of `In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson', Park's story focuses on the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s with the main character, Maggie, among their most ardent fans. Maggie spends considerable time with the firemen at the local firehouse where her father once worked. She sits with the firemen and Charcoal, the firehouse Labrador, and listens fervently to the games on the radio. A new fireman, Jim, a (gasp!) Giants' fan, teaches Maggie how to keep score, which Maggie does with religious, but somewhat futile, conviction for her Dodgers after learning with Jim and the Giants' games. Then, Jim goes to Korea to serve. He replies to Maggie's regular letters for a while, then... nothing.... Description stops here to avoid spoilers. Maggie, with her youthful enthusiasm, energy, and good will is an enjoyable character. Her supporting characters, her best friend, her family, and the firemen mostly, are warm additions to her world, Maggie and the story are endearing and recommended for an intermediate grades student, most especially for a compassionate girl who happens to enjoy baseball.


Tags : Keeping Score [Linda Sue Park] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Against the background of major league baseball and the Korean War, Maggie Fortini, who is a diehard Brooklyn Dodgers fan,Linda Sue Park,Keeping Score,Clarion Books,0618927999,Baseball stories.,Families;New York (State);New York;Juvenile fiction.,Friendship;Juvenile fiction.,Baseball stories,Children's BooksAges 9-12 Fiction,Children: Grades 4-6,Families,Friendship,Historical - United States - 20th Century,Juvenile Fiction,Juvenile Fiction Historical United States 20th Century,Juvenile Fiction Sports & Recreation Baseball & Softball,Juvenile Historical Fiction,New York,New York (State),Social Issues - General,Sports & Recreation - Baseball

Keeping Score Linda Sue Park 9780618927999 Books Reviews

Great book that I read with my eight year old. Building the passion for baseball with the Korean War and PTSD for context, woven in artfully and seamlessly. Highly recommended.
Loved it! Read at the same time as my grandson,
one really pleasant shared experience - if he lets me know
of another I will certainly ready that as well
I read this book with my 9 year old son. It is such a wonderful story of love, friendship, sacrifice & hope.
Kept me mildly interested. I stopped several times to read something else, then went back. It's ok.
Worth it!
In Keeping Score, Linda Sue Park again gives us an opportunity to really feel what it was like to be a particular kid in a particular place and time quite different from our own. In Maggie-O's mid-twentieth century New York, the technology was different, but the kids still had problems that today's kids can relate to. Baseball without TV or the Internet -- just imagine! Maggie tunes in to the game by listening to radios through open windows while walking through the neighborhood. She shares the ups and downs of her favorite team with the whole community. Her baseball experience includes no visuals at all except the black-and-white photos in the morning paper. When Maggie-O first lays eyes on that field we are right there with her, seeing what she sees (GREEN!) and feeling what she feels. Her obsession with score keeping, her magical thinking and superstitions are quirky but quite age appropriate, and her growth through disillusionment seems quite genuine. Maggie's experience of the effect of the Korean War on her friend Jim will give today's kids a peak at some of the difficulties facing our own soldiers today. Here's a book that is serious and intelligent, but tremendously engaging. It's a great choice for preteens who like to see how the world looks through someone else's eyes, even if they couldn't care less about baseball. I think this wonderful story also has cross-generational appeal--giving parents a glimpse into the universal experience of tweener angst and giving sixty-somethings a chance to rekindle memories from their younger days. Another home run for Ms. Park!
Janet Gingold
author of Danger, Long Division
This heartfelt, endearing, nostalgic and educational tale is set in Brooklyn, New York in July 1951. The main character is Maggie Fortini who is nine going on ten years-old. She is known to everyone as Maggie-o and her older brother is known as Joey-Mick, both being named after their Father's favorite New York Yankee Joe DiMaggio. But here's the "rub" Maggie-o, Joey-Mick, and their Mom, absolutely love and "live-and die" with the Brooklyn Dodgers! "DEM BUMS" as all Brooklyn fans affectionately called their beloved Dodgers, were the center of their lives. Their entire neighborhood regardless of race, creed, color, or sex, shared their mutual love of the Dodgers in the same manner as "O-positive" blood was a universal donor in an emergency room. Whenever there was a Dodger game being played, the radio in Maggie-o's house was always turned on with Red Barber (and later on Vince Scully) providing the play by play with such favorite phrases as "a can of corn" for an easy pop fly, and "sitting in the catbird's seat" when "DEM BUMS" had a good lead. It was an unspoken rule in the house that if Mr. Fortini wanted to listen to a big Yankee game he had to go somewhere else. If Maggie-o had to leave the house to go to school, or go to the store, or go to the firehouse, while a game was on, she never missed a pitch as long as she was in the neighborhood. Every house and every store she passed had the Dodger game on and it was like stereo coming from all the windows.

Maggie-o's Father had been a fireman until he suffered a bad leg injury fighting a fire. Now he worked in an administrative position at another location. His old firehouse was just down the block and Maggie-o spent countless hours there with the firemen and their dog Chalky. During baseball season the men would sit outside and listen to the Dodger games and Maggie-o would always join them when she wasn't in school. There was nothing but Dodger fans at the firehouse until one day there was a new recruit named Jim Maine who was a Giant fan. The other firemen wouldn't let Jim listen to the Giant games loud, so at times he would lay on the floor next to his radio. Maggie-o befriended Jim or it could just have easily been the other way around, and before you knew it, Jim was teaching Maggie-o the official way to keep play-by-play score of a baseball game. Maggie-o started keeping "official" scorecards of every inning of every game when she wasn't in school. Jim even taught her how to keep track of every ball and every strike, even differentiating between called strikes and swinging strikes.

This was the point in time of the Korean War/Conflict, and bad news hit the firehouse when Jim received his draft notice and had to report for active duty. Maggie-o immediately started writing letters, even before his ship crossed the ocean to Korea. Jim started writing back for awhile, and then all of a sudden he stopped. Maggie-o was distraught and couldn't find out why Jim had stopped writing. She then put as much effort into learning everything about the Korean Conflict (It hadn't been officially classified as a war yet) as she did into learning how to keep official score. I must admit I learned things about the Korean War that I didn't know based on Maggie-o's maps and footnotes. During this gloomy time in Maggie-o's life, she became extra diligent in her scorekeeping in honor of Jim. She even prayed harder, and without giving away a major part of the story, I'll suffice to say that she even convinced herself to commit the biggest sin in Brooklyn, by secretly rooting one year for the HATED Giants to win, because she hoped and prayed that would help Jim.

According to the promotional information regarding the release of this book, it is supposedly geared for children aged 9-12 years old. I am a Grandfather, who is originally from Brooklyn, and my entire family was born with the Dodger's as the very blood that pumped through our veins, and this story is so realistic in every way. The pedestal that Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Carl Furillo and Maggie-o's Mother's favorite pitcher that "fine young Mr. Labine", and the other bums were put on, was portrayed as true as life! I actually had tears come down my face a number of times. Some of the tears were because I got to go back and relive some of my fondest childhood memories by living through Maggie-o's beautiful Brooklyn Dodger loving eyes. My parents are long gone, but this story brought my families most cherished times to life again in my heart because of this author's beautiful (And for my family accurate) story telling. Other tears were because of the many sorrow's that are an awful by product of war. This is a wonderful, wonderful, book that would make a great "Hallmark Hall Of Fame" type movie that would be enjoyed by entire generations of a family.

As far as my tears; Maggie-o said it best on page 179 "MAGGIE BLINKED SEVERAL TIMES, HARD. THERE WASN'T ANY WAY TO STOP TEARS FROM FILLING YOUR EYES ONCE THEY HAD DECIDED TO DO IT. YOU COULD BLINK THEM AWAY, BUT ONLY AFTER THEY WERE ALREADY THERE."
With overtones of `In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson', Park's story focuses on the Brooklyn Dodgers of the early 1950s with the main character, Maggie, among their most ardent fans. Maggie spends considerable time with the firemen at the local firehouse where her father once worked. She sits with the firemen and Charcoal, the firehouse Labrador, and listens fervently to the games on the radio. A new fireman, Jim, a (gasp!) Giants' fan, teaches Maggie how to keep score, which Maggie does with religious, but somewhat futile, conviction for her Dodgers after learning with Jim and the Giants' games. Then, Jim goes to Korea to serve. He replies to Maggie's regular letters for a while, then... nothing.... Description stops here to avoid spoilers. Maggie, with her youthful enthusiasm, energy, and good will is an enjoyable character. Her supporting characters, her best friend, her family, and the firemen mostly, are warm additions to her world, Maggie and the story are endearing and recommended for an intermediate grades student, most especially for a compassionate girl who happens to enjoy baseball.