by Mick Cochrane
ages: 9+
First sentence: “On Monday, after band rehearsal and intramurals, when Molly got home from school, her mother was sitting at the kitchen table going through the day’s mail.”
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Molly loves baseball. It’s a holdover from when her father — who died six months ago in a freak car accident — was alive, but it’s the only thread of connection she has to his memory. It’s not just watching baseball, though, or even playing catch that Molly likes. No, she wants to play, really play, the game. Her father taught her how to throw that most unpredictable of all pitches, the knuckleball, and Molly knows she can compete with the boys. So, she tries out for the baseball team.

This story is a quiet one, a meditation on loss, on baseball, on healing and moving on. It’s not flashy, it’s not over-the-top: not for a minute do you disbelieve Molly’s ability to throw a good game. Cochrane gives us both Molly’s ups — the perfect pitch, the game won — as well as her many downs — for, as he writes at one point, baseball is a game of failures. There’s a softness, a gentleness to the story, for even though there is conflicts — with her mother, with teammates who don’t like the idea of a girl on the team — the tension never reaches a boiling point. There’s a lot of musing going on, a lot of reflection, a lot of thought.

Which isn’t to say that it’s a boring book: it’s not. Cochrane is a good enough writer that he can pull off a book where the action is mostly internal and keep one turning pages. It’s a good book, an interesting story, and as far as books about girls doing boy things go, it’s worth reading.

(Just for the record: because this is a Cybils nominee, I’ve been asked to make sure y’all know this is my opinion only, and not that of the panel.)