Home Base: A Mother-Daughter Story

PreS-Gr 2–Told mostly with illustrations, this is a story of a mom and daughter who are both entering male-dominated fields. The daughter, who has light brown skin and long black-and-purple hair, is trying out for a boy’s baseball team. The pale-skinned, freckled, and tattooed mom is beginning a job as a bricklayer. Mother and daughter receive simultaneous callbacks after their stressful day of “tryouts.” They both work hard and are triumphant. One spread shows the girl’s progressive pitching form at the top of both pages. The artwork blossoms from a rough sketch of her pitch wind-up to full-color detail when she releases the ball. On the bottom of this same spread, the mother’s level is underlining the action. The level’s bubble is perfectly centered. The sparse text, “Straight. Fast. Strong,” on this page and similar well-chosen words on all the other pages make this story effective and delightful.