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Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove) | J 811.52 THA | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
"And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville-mighty Casey has struck out." Those lines have echoed through the decades, the final stanza of a poem published pseudonymously in the June 3, 1888, issue of the San Francisco Examiner. Its author would rather have seen it forgotten. Instead, Ernest Thayer's poem has taken a well-deserved place as an enduring icon of Americana. Christopher Bing's magnificent version of this immortal ballad of the flailing 19th-century baseball star is rendered as though it had been newly discovered in a hundred-year-old scrapbook. Bing seamlessly weaves real and trompe l'oeil reproductions of artifacts-period baseball cards, tickets, advertisements, and a host of other memorabilia into the narrative to present a rich and multifaceted panorama of a bygone era. A book to be pored over by children, treasured by aficionados of the sport-and given as a gift to all ages: a tragi-comic celebration of heroism and of a golden era of sport.
Author Notes
Christopher Bing, whose first book, "Casey at the Bat," was named a 2001 Caldecott Honor Book, lives with his wife and three children in Lexington, Massachusetts, in a house directly on the Freedom Trail, the route on which Paul Revere rod
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Debut children's book illustrator Bing hits a home run with this handsome faux-scrapbook treatment of Thayer's immortal poem. The original verses about baseball star Casey and the ill-fated Mudville nine appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on June 3, 1888, and Bing captures the spirit of the age with pen-and-ink illustrations that look like carefully preserved newspaper clippings, complete with slightly torn and yellowed edges. He uses cross-hatching and careful shading to create the pages of The Mudville Sunday Monitor, which keenly resemble the newspaper engravings of the day. Columns of type (in historically accurate printers' fonts, as an afterword points out) run beneath each illustration to bolster the conceit. Bing also scatters other "scrapbook" items throughout, from game tickets (a bargain at 20 cents) to old-fashioned baseball cards and stereopticon imagesDmany of them carefully keyed to the text. Full-color currency, for instance, accompanies "They thought if only Casey could but get a whack at thatD/ We'd put up even money now with Casey at the bat," while an ad for Brown's Bronchial Troches appears with the couplet "Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell;/ It rumbled through the valley, it rattled in the dell." Endpapers reveal more items to delight baseball fans and history buffs, from Thayer's newspaper obituary to a fake bookplate wreathed with baseball motifs. Though Casey and the Mudville nine strike out in the end, this exceptionally clever picture book is definitely a winner. All ages. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) During the months from spring training until the World Series, fans and athletes play baseball, talk baseball, and watch baseball; the rest of the year, they read and write about baseball. In the best of such literature, one convention prevails: the grandeur of the game becomes a mythical backdrop to the greater story, that of chronicling experiences that come through sharing the love of the contest. It is this convention that marks Bing's interpretation of Thayer's literary icon, ""Casey at the Bat."" Squarely setting the poem in 1888 when it originated, Bing establishes Casey's humiliation as noteworthy by creating a late edition of the Mudville Monitor to report the event. That there was no Mudville, no game, and no such newspaper matters not at all. This is baseball; the telling of the experience always transcends the particulars of a single event. The fourteen double-page scratchboard drawings perfectly re-create gazette etchings of the time. Casey is drawn as a big man with a big conceit, the quintessential hero whose definition of the sport appropriately parallels that of our country's history of substantial dreams, passions, accomplishments, and disappointments. The yellowed, crumbling pages of this manufactured artifact look authentic, and notes contained within the book attest to the care with which artist, designer, and publisher took in their re-creation, from researching type fonts to collecting sports ephemera. Small collages composed primarily of advertisements appropriate to the times and baseball memorabilia, some authentic and some fabricated, decorate the pages. Such a mixture of fact and fiction begs for discussion and sharing, particularly between parent and child, which is, after all, the legacy of both the sport and the literature that surrounds it. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Ages 5^-8. First-time children's book illustrator Bing's take on Casey at the Bat represents, above all, a stunning example of contemporary bookmaking in which the most sophisticated electronic techniques have been used to re-create the past. The text is presented as a "newly discovered," 100-year-old scrapbook into which newspaper articles, including Thayer's poem and other memorabilia, have been pasted, recording not only the events of the day--Casey's ninth-inning strikeout and the Mudville nine's four-to-two defeat--but also a broader view of the baseball world in 1888. The poem is illustrated in two-page spreads in which Bing's scratchboard drawings effectively capture the look of engravings used in newspapers of the period. Imposed over the drawings are fictional clippings that amplify issues suggested in the text (on the spread where Jimmy Blake "tears the cover off the ball," an editorial decries the practice of using only one ball throughout a game). Elsewhere, the illustrations depict a black player, and the clipping concerns the soon-to-be-instituted color line. (As with all the fictional clippings, this reference to baseball before the color line is historically accurate.) There is a phenomenal amount of information on baseball history compacted into this fascinating format, and the juxtaposition of memorabilia to text is unfailingly, even exhaustingly, clever (a newspaper ad for "bronchial troches" to cure hoarseness appears alongside the lines "Then from 5,000 throats and more there rose a lusty yell"). As with so many recent tour-de-force picture books, however, questions linger about the audience. For all its brilliance and bravura, this is a far less kid-friendly Casey than Gerald Fitzgerald's 1995 version. Adults, of course, will marvel at the bookmaking and relish the arcane information, but they may meet a fate similar to Casey's when they try to pass on their enthusiasm to their young children. Bill Ott
School Library Journal Review
Gr 3 Up-Thayer's classic poem of the 19th-century baseball legend has been revived for a new generation in this creatively designed package. From the first look at the cover, produced to resemble a vintage scrapbook, through the interior views of pages from the "Mudville Monitor," Bing has orchestrated every detail to great effect. Each double spread, rendered in ink and brush on scratchboard, is a scene from the poem. The multitude of lines adds energy; the multiple perspectives create interest. Overlaid on this tattered "newsprint" is baseball memorabilia (cards, tickets, medallions, postcards), as well as cleverly fabricated ads or editorials that relate to the moment. The book will be enjoyed by intergenerational partners who can pore over the pages and point things out to one another. It would be a gold mine for teachers seeking inspiration for period projects.-Wendy Lukehart, Dauphin County Library, Harrisburg, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The outlook wasnt brilliant for the Mudville nine that day. . . . But the outlook for the possibilities of digitally manipulated design in childrens books looks increasingly brilliant as evidenced by this rather amazing version of Thayers well-loved baseball poem, Casey at the Bat. In Bings debut, he has created a delightful oversized scrapbook version of the poem with double-page spreads making it appear to be authentic newspaper illustrations from the Mudville Monitor of June 3, 1888. Bings old-fashioned line drawings are done in the style of 19th-century engravings, complemented by thick, sepia-toned paper that appears to be faded at the edges. The scrapbook design continues throughout the book, with items relating to the poem (baseball tickets, medals, money, newspaper clippings, and advertisements) creatively interspersed throughout the text pages as though pasted there a century ago. The title page is set as the front page of the paper with an authors note as newspaper column; a mock obituary on the inside back cover gives biographical information on Thayer; and an editors note set as a torn scrap of newspaper describes the complex computerized processes used to create the book. Teachers who want to introduce the poem to students will find all the information for an entire lesson in this one volume, including the price of a small-town paper in 1888 (two cents). A solid hit. (Poetry. 8+)
