Amira Can Catch

Gr 1–3—Amira is new to school, having relocated to the United States from a refugee camp in Syria. In an effort to help her make friends, a classmate named Nick invites her to practice with his baseball team after school. From there, readers are taken through various techniques and terms that Amira is also learning. Kids are given a glance into what a Syrian refugee camp might look like, but they are given no explanation as to why her family was there to begin with. The characters are drawn in a cartoon style, and sometimes they demonstrate different game-related formations, positions, and plays. Unfortunately, the illustrations don't always match the text, depicting the children standing in a different way than instructed or are odd; lasers shooting out of their eyes, for example. The coloring on all pages is inconsistent and the Asian American character has a yellow tinge in addition to being drawn with exaggeratedly slanted eyes. The back matter consists of an article and a list of terms readers learned in the narrative, but no definitions are given. This book attempts to be too many things at once—a story about a Syrian refugee, an instructional book on baseball basics, a tale about friendship—but falls short on all fronts.