Baseball Saved Us

Author: Ken Mochizuki

Illustrator: Dom Lee

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade level: K-4

Award: Washington State Book Award

There is a boy who is nicknamed Shorty because of his size. Shorty and his family are taken to an interment camp. Shorty's dad decided that it was time to build a baseball field. The community is all for the sport in order to boost moral. Shorty is not very good but he practice a lot and eventually gets much better. He is motivated by one of the guards that sits and watches him. Shorty is faced with many racial slurs, negative comments, and bullying for his Japanese nature. In the end he is up to bat again in a game winning situation. He tunes out the heckling and he comes up big for his team in the end and wins. 

This book can be used to talk about how the Japanese were treated during WWI. This can be used to learn about how racism is bad and how they were treated during this time. 

The illustrations are very interesting. They are mostly dark colors to represent how depressing and how dark and dreary their time is. Each page is differently occupied with the illustrations. Some pages occupy the whole page and some have white borders. Some even cover a two page spread. The illustrator used beeswax on paper scratching out images and adding oil and paint for color.