I am very excited to hear that you are reading the adventures of Freddie Ramos in the Zapato Power series.
The character of Freddie was inspired by the students I taught when I was a school librarian. So many of my students asked for a book on superheroes that I got the itch to write one. But I didn’t just want to write about any superhero. I wanted to write a book that imagined one of my students learning to how to handle a super power. Freddie’s first name comes from one of my students and his last name comes from another.
After I came up with a name, I had to decide what super power to give Freddie. Once again, my students helped me, as I remembered many great class discussions after reading the folktale The Seven Chinese Brothers. It’s a story about seven brothers who each have one special power. I often asked my students which brother they would choose to be. The brother with super strength? Or super hearing? Super eyesight? These conversations helped me consider what superpowers Freddie Ramos needed for his story.
I chose super speed because I wanted Freddie’s power to come from special sneakers. As I continued the story, I gave Freddie a few additional powers, like telescopic eyesight, invisibility, and super bounce. These powers help Freddie solve mysteries and help others in the Zapato Power series.
As you read Freddie’s adventures, I hope you will imagine what you would do if one day you came home from school to find a box with super-powered purple sneakers. How would you use super speed? And how would it complicate your life? Could you use your super speed on the playground or at gym? Could you tell your friends you had magic sneakers? These are all questions I had to consider while writing the Zapato Power series. I had a lot of fun thinking about these things and I hope you have fun reading the answers I came up with.
There are few feelings more satisfying – to both young and old readers, alike – than meeting characters you come to regard as friends and can follow on their adventures in book after book after book.For younger readers, there’s the additional comfort of familiar language and plot that makes reading a series not only satisfying, but beneficial: kids who get hooked on a series boost confidence in their ability to tackle new stories and develop reading fluency.
From the popular BabyMouse series by Jennifer L. and Matthew Holm to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, there are series to suit every taste, for every kind of reader in K-5.
This month, ReaderKidZ is pleased to welcome the author of the ZAPATO POWER series, Jacqueline Jules , and later in the month, Tony Abbott, author of the wildly popular THE SECRETS OF DROON series …
Throughout the month, we’ll be talking about series of all kinds, for all ages. We hope you’ll share some of your favorites, too!
Congrats to Author-In-Residence, JACQUELINE JULES, for her 2011 Cybils win in the Short Chapter Book category for FREDDIE RAMOS TAKES OFF. Read more about Jacqueline HERE.
Read about this month’s special guest, Tony Abbott, HERE.
We’re pleased to finish off January’s list of books with a wonderful new title by first-time author Sandra Neil Wallace. LITTLE JOE is a beautifully written story of a young boy who comes of age as he learns the challenges and looming heartbreak of raising his first calf.
Eli’d seen calves being born before, but standing beside Grandpa and watching Fancy give birth to a fine bull calf – his own, Little Joe – was something Eli would never forget.
It hadn’t started out well but, with Grandpa’s help, Eli gave Little Joe his first breaths and when the danger had passed, he’d also given Little Joe a piece of his heart. Over the months he raises Little Joe, Eli encounters many challenges, not the least of which is his father’s sometimes harsh ways. But by story’s end, both Eli and his father have learned to view one another with new understanding and admiration.
Full of fascinating details about cattle-raising and life on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, readers of LITTLE JOE will find themselves swept away by the richness of the language, the beauty of the setting.
This heart-warming story deserves a place on every middle grade classroom and young reader’s bookshelf.
Effa’s gravestone reads: SHE LOVED BASEBALL. And did she ever!
In 1935, Effa and her husband, Abe, started the Brooklyn Eagles in the new Negro National League. A year later, when the team moved to Rupert Field, Effa took on the job of managing most of the Newark Eagles’ business.
She worked tirelessly, not only against the injustices her players faced, but other inequalities she witnessed in the black community.
Effa organized the Citizens’ League for Fair Play, to urge the largest department store in Harlem to hire black salesclerks. When Negro League players began to move over to the major leagues, once again, Effa was instrumental in changing the practice of signing players with no compensation for the Negro League team they came from.
Times changed and the Negro Leagues soon found themselves obsolete. Effa took up the cause and began a letter-writing campaign to persuade the National Baseball Hall of Fame to recognize Negro League Stars.
Twenty-five years after her death, Effa Manley was the first woman inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame!
It’s Sports and Good Nutrition Day and, once again, Cam’s amazing photographic memory comes to the rescue! In three short chapter books rolled-into-one, the pictures Cam stores in her head enable her and her classmates to solve the three mysteries (The Backward Race Mystery, The Soccer Game Mystery, The Baseball Glove Mystery) that surface at Franklin Park over the course of the fifth grade’s Sports Day.
Beginning chapter book readers who are familiar with other of the Cam Jansen mysteries, will enjoy reading this newer collection in the series.
Times were hard in 1932. It was the Great Depression and millions were out of work. THE BABE AND I tells the fictional story of one such family.
Selling papers near Yankee Stadium and calling out headlines heralding Babe Ruth’s successes on the field, the young narrator ties his success to Babe’s and manages to earn extra change for the family money jar by working as a newsie.
When he discovers that the “office” his dad carries his briefcase to each day is really a corner on Webster Avenue where he’s forced to sell apples in order to earn small change for the jar, the young narrator learns to appreciate the sacrifice his own father makes in order to care for his family.
Gordon Korman is a favorite among middle grade readers and SWINDLE, the first in a series of three books about Griffin Bing, “The Man With a Plan,” comes highly recommended. It’s a read-aloud pick that makes its way each year into the repertoire of one of the teachers at my school, and while I wasn’t sure how I’d feel when I first began the book, I have to say that the story grew on me and I can see why kids love Korman’s books as much as they do.
Griffin Bing and his cohort of school pals seem to get mixed up in one crazy situation after another. This time, Griffin’s stumbled upon a valuable Babe Ruth baseball card, purportedly worth millions. But before Griffin has a chance to cash in, he’s swindled out the money by the shady S. Wendell Palomino of Palomino’s Collectibles.
While the plot sometimes veers into implausible territory, the story moves quickly and Griffin and his band of friends manage to come out on top.
For those who enjoy this book, Zoobreak and Framed follow the same cast of zany characters in more fast-packed action.
I admit to knowing very little about sports. None of us – my sisters, mom, not even my father – watched or played sports. As such, I have no particular team loyalties and all I know is what I’ve gleaned over years of watching my sons’ games and listening in on bits and pieces of conversations they’ve had with my husband.
Fact: there is almost no sports trivia that can stump my husband. He knows more than his lifetime’s worth of information.
So it was a particular pleasure to read BABE RUTH AND THE BASEBALL CURSE. I, of course, knew nothing of the curse, and this Stepping Stones Chapter Book was just ticket! Not only did I learn a few (many, actually) new things about Babe’s career, but I also learned a small bit of trivia that even my husband didn’t know. The whole book was quite fascinating. From this non-sports reader, that’s got the be the ultimate compliment!
The cover of YOU NEVER HEARD OF SANDY KOUFAX?! is stunning and made quite a name for itself when the book was first published. (For those who are interested, there’s a description on the copyright page of how this “lenticular” cover was made.) But it’s Winter’s words and Carrilho’s striking illustrations that carry this story of the power pitcher who emerged in the early 60’s – “For six years, Koufax stood on the pitcher’s mound like a prince, and when you looked at that serious mug of his, you could tell he was gonna beat you.”
The book – words and illustrations – are a supreme example of what the best picture books aspire to. And the reader is left with the essence of Koufax – a very private, yet determined, man who had the fortitude and character to do what he needed to do, on the field and off.
I’ve included THE LUCKY BASEBALL BAT by Matt Christopher (one of the first names that comes to mind when thinking about sports novels), not so much because it gets high marks for well-crafted fiction, but because a second grade teacher I know passed it along as the first real chapter book to win the heart of one of her students. He could manage the short chapters and enjoyed the success of having tackled what felt like his first “real book.” First published in 1954, THE LUCKY BASEBALL BAT was also one of the first such books my husband read, oh-so-long-ago. Which just goes to show, it’s not always easy to predict which book will win the heart of a reader.
Find more great books about baseball HERE and HERE.
WE ARE THE SHIP by Kadir Nelson;BASEBALL SAVED US by Ken Mochizuki, illustrated by Dom Lee; A DIFFERENT GAME by Sylvia Olsen; CATCHING THE MOON: The Story of a Young Girl’s Baseball Dream by Crystal Hubbard, illustrated by Randy DuBurke.
Crystal Hubbard’s GAME, SET, MATCH, CHAMPION ARTHUR ASHE, illustrated by Kevin Belford, is a tribute to one of the most amazing athletes of the twentieth century. Not only was Arthur Ashe a remarkable championship tennis player, but he was also a life-long advocate for human rights, at home and abroad. This unlikely champion earned a place in history when he became the first African American man to win the Grand Slam Tournament.
As a young girl, Marcenia Lyle dreamed of playing professional ball. Determination got her there. CATCHING THE MOON: The Story of a Young Girl’s Baseball Dream chronicles the beginnings of that long journey and the spunky young girl who found a way to earn a position on the St. Louis Cardinal’s sponsored summer camp team.
I was born in St. Louis, Missouri. My mother was a teacher, and she raised me and my five sisters with help from my Grandma Hazel, who lived in one of the two apartments above ours. My Grandma was the best cook and she was very strong. When I was little, she used to hold me upside-down by my ankles and swing me, and I LOVED that!
My mother loved to read, and every week in the summer, she would send me to the library to get books for her. I loved to go because I loved to read, too, and the head librarian, Isabel Duncan, introduced me to so many authors—Mark Twain, Harper Lee, Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas—I was never bored in the summer because my days were filled with stories.
When I was ten, I decided I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to tell stories just like the authors I adored. So I wrote a play. It was called “Disco Cleopatra,” and it was about a 17-year-old Cleopatra and her adventures trying to get a pair of Nike Disco Roller Skates, the kind with the white swoosh and the neon-orange urethane wheels. She needed those skates to catch the eye of Marc Antony. Cleopatra and Marc Antony were real historical figures, but I put them in a completely fictional setting in my play.
When I was in seventh grade, I wrote a long, sprawling soap opera that I’d charge kids 10 cents a page to read at recess. The story only had three characters, but I had them falling off cliffs in canoes, wrestling pythons in jungles, being tied to fire ant hills and all kinds of horrible adventures. The story ended only because the school year did!
In high school, I used to write stories in spiral notebooks, but one day, my notebooks disappeared from a bookrack for three days. I was in a panic because I didn’t want anyone reading my stories! My notebooks magically reappeared, but after that, I never let anyone read anything I wrote. I was too self-conscious.
I was working as a sports copy editor at the Boston Herald when I met a woman named Jen Safrey. She worked at the newspaper too, but she was also a romance novelist. I worked up the courage to show her a book I’d written, and she encouraged me to send it to a publisher. That’s when I decided to pursue publication, and in 2005, my first adult novel and my first picture book debuted within three months of one another.
I had so many weird habits as a child, most of which remain with me now. When I eat plums, I have to eat all the skin first, and then eat the flesh. I can only eat scrambled eggs if they’re covered in syrup. I have to sleep in an oversized T-shirt, and I never, ever walk around barefoot. When I write, I always have to use a black, fine-point pen, and I always write my first drafts longhand in spiral notebooks. And I never sleep barefoot. I always wear socks.
Any defining moments (good or bad) that shaped you as a child?
I grew up without a father. My mother was a girly girl, so she never mowed the lawn or fixed the car. My Grandma Hazel was a beautiful woman, but she was also wicked tough. She’s the one who taught me how to change the filter in a furnace, start a charcoal fire that could burn for days, and how to use a pencil to choke a carburetor. She’s also the person who taught me about baseball, and instilled a love of the sport in me. I can’t say that growing up without a father was bad, but it wasn’t good either. I think I’d be a far different person than who I am if my father had helped raise me.
One of the best moments of my childhood was spending my sixth-grade year in the class of a teacher named Gloria Griffero. Mrs. Griffero encouraged creative writing and she really encouraged me to write whatever I wanted.
Did you ever do something brave when you were young?
My sister Joelle was drowning in a public pool, and I pulled her out, but I don’t think of that as a brave thing to do. It was instinctive. The bravest thing I ever did as a child was to face the kids who used to tease me, spit on me and throw rocks at me when I walked from my house to the library. My family was the only family of color in our neighborhood, and some of our neighbors didn’t like us. My love of reading outweighed my fear of mean kids, so I would make that walk just about every day even though I knew it was scary.
Did you ever get into trouble at home or school?
Yes! I was always in trouble in high school—for slipping grades and for skipping classes. My behavior improved when my drama teacher, John Faust, and the school headmaster, Edward Cissel, showed an interest in my future. They genuinely cared about me, and that made all the difference.
What advice do you have for aspiring young readers and writers?
My advice to aspiring young writers is to write. Simply write whatever you want, and don’t ever throw something away just because you don’t like it. You never know when you might want to revisit that story, and chances are good that it’s not as bad as you think it is. Just write. That’s the best advice for any writer.
Do you have any children or pets and have you ever used them in a book?
I have four children. A son, who’s fourteen, and three daughters. They’re nine, six and four. I also have a dog, a miniature poodle mix named Maggie; two cornsnakes named Candy Beaverhausen and Snakey; three bearded dragons named Peyton, Alex and Chris; and two African dwarf frogs named Legs and Rocket.
Quick Picks:
Soup or salad?
I’m a salad fanatic! My favorite is romaine lettuce with artichoke hearts, olives and a sweet Italian dressing.
Dog, Cat, Bird, or Fish?
My snake, Candy Beaverhausen, is my favorite animal.
Favorite or least favorite vegetable?
Brussels sprouts are my favorite vegetable. Carrots are my least favorite.
Longhand or computer?
Longhand. I like the feel of the words coming out of my pen.
Early Bird Writer or Night Owl?
I’m an early bird writer and a night owl. I usually write late at night into the early morning hours.
Download a copy of Crystal’s Story to share with students HERE.
Read, “Your Friend, Crystal Hubbard (A Letter to Readers)” HERE.
Power series.
After I came up with a name, I had to decide what super power to give Freddie. Once again, my students helped me, as I remembered many great class discussions after reading the folktale The Seven Chinese Brothers. It’s a story about seven brothers who each have one special power. I often asked my students which brother they would choose to be. The brother with super strength? Or super hearing? Super eyesight? These conversations helped me consider what superpowers Freddie Ramos needed for his story.
