Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings, Deborah Hopkinson

Girl Wonder is a historical fiction picture book written in a unique way.  It is kind of like a mini chapter book because the different parts of her life are divided into innings and on the side of the pages that represent a new inning there is a bat and a baseball with the number in it so readers know what inning it is in the book.  In the first inning she threw a corncob at a cat and everyone was impressed.  In the second inning she has her first memory of throwing a ball and gets her name “Girl Wonder.”  In the third inning nothing could stop her from playing ball in the summer she played with the boys and in the winter in a barn where she gets her first fans.  In the fourth inning she is seventeen and everyone is telling her it is time to be a lady.  In the fifth through eighth inning she plays for a semipro team.  Finally, in the ninth inning the book comes full circle.

When I read this I immediately thought of the recent Little League World Series.  Mone Davis is a young girl who is a pitcher on an all-boys team that went far in the Little League World Series.  Mone is literally a present day “Girl Wonder”.  I would read this book with my class and have them do research on Mone Davis.  Then as a class we would create a venn diagram to compare and contrast Mone to the main character in the book.  Then students would write a blog entry about the similarities and differences.