It's 1949, Oregon, and the sixth grade girls of Bear Creek Ridge are getting psyched up to play the town's traditional softball game against Barlow Road Pioneers. World War II is over but the deep feelings of loss are still with us.
Told from the perspectives of the girls on the two teams, the emotion comes to a fiercely painful high when Shazam and Aki collide against teach other at first base.
Shazam's father died at Pearl Harbor in the Japanese attack and she is struggling with the pain and the anger. Aki and her family spent much of the war imprisoned in an American internment camp. Shazam hates the Japanese. Aki's voice reveals bits and pieces of her culture along with the suffering her family experienced in the camp.
The story delivers a deeply etched moral that war doesn't end on Armistice Day. It's aftermath and repercussions reach on for years.
240 pages 978-0590898003 9-13
Recommended by: Barb Langridge, abookandahug.com
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Set in a small Oregon town just after World War II, this is the powerful tale of a community shattered by its reaction to two young newcomers, Aki and Shazam. Told from 21 different points of view, "Bat 6" explores the subject of Japanese-American racial prejudice after the war.--from the publisher
In small town, post-World War Oregon, twenty-one 6th grade girls recount the story of an annual softball game, during which one girl's bigotry comes to the surface.--from the publisher
