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Summary
Summary
Welcome to Moundville, where it's been raining for longer than Roy McGuire has been alive. Most people say the town is cursed-right in the middle of their big baseball game against rival town Sinister Bend, black clouds crept across the sky and it started to rain. That was 22 years ago . . . and it's still pouring.
Baseball camp is over, and Roy knows he's in for a dreary, soggy summer. But when he returns home, he finds a foster kid named Sturgis sprawled out on his couch. As if this isn't weird enough, just a few days after Sturgis's arrival, the sun comes out. No one can explain why the rain has finally stopped, but as far as Roy's concerned, it's time to play some baseball. It's time to get a Moundville team together and finish what was started 22 years ago. It's time for a rematch.
From the Hardcover edition.
Author Notes
Kurtis Scaletta was born in Louisiana and grew up in New Mexico, North Dakota, England, Liberia, Brazil, and a few other places. He now lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with his wife and several cats. Find out more about Kurtis on the Web at www.kurtisscaletta.com
Reviews (4)
Horn Book Review
(Intermediate) With references throughout to Ernest Thayer's "Casey at the Bat," this humorous and tender ode to baseball is as full of hope and suspense as Casey's famous turn at bat. It has been raining in the town of Moundville for twenty-two years; if that's not bad enough, nothing else in twelve-year-old Roy's life has given him much reason for optimism. His mother is absent save for drunken phone calls and the occasional postcard, and his father has invited a surly and mysterious foster kid, Sturgis, into their home. Roy knows that "you learn pretty young not to start planting sunflowers just because the rain lets up a little." But when the sun comes out and the rain miraculously stops, baseball-lover Roy assembles a scrappy team and coaches them to play Sinister Bend, Moundville's archrivals. Through a cast of memorable characters -- one kid is called Google because the only phrase he seems to know in English is "search me" -- Scaletta's enthusiasm for the sport shines. As the "Mudville Nine" resurrect the soaked baseball field, they bring life to a whole town. Though Roy's maturity at times seems beyond his age and experience, he is still an engaging narrator. Baseball fans or not, readers will sympathize with Sturgis for his painful past and root for Roy and his team to win the big game. From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Those who don't know an RBI from an ERA should look elsewhere, but for readers who eat and sleep sports, Scaletta's debut is a gift from the baseball gods. It centers on 12-year-old Roy McGuire, whose dreams of being a major leaguer are literally dampened by the fact that it has been raining in his hometown for 22 years. The rain began during a contest with neighboring Sinister Bend, and it ends right after Roy returns from baseball camp to find a new foster brother, Sturgis, living at his house. Their relationship is rocky, but no one can deny Sturgis' throwing power, and soon both boys are ramping up for an epic rematch between the two towns. Various asides and in-jokes make clear that Scaletta is steeped not only in baseball lore but in such movie classics as The Natural and Field of Dreams, and that sort of larger-than-life magic realism lends his story the aura of a proper tall tale. Sports nuts, including reluctant readers, will sense they are in good hands with this one.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2009 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 6-8-Vandals have crossed off the "o" and the "n" from the welcome sign outside the town of Moundville, and appropriately so, as it's been raining there continually for 22 years. Shortly after 12-year-old Roy discovers that he'll be sharing his bedroom with Sturgis, a scarred foster child about his age, the rain stops. What better opportunity to organize some baseball? In short order Roy finds himself captaining a ragtag team with himself as catcher, Sturgis-who has a wicked fastball-on the mound, and position players of both sexes with wildly varying levels of skill. Scaletta takes nearly 80 pages to trot out his varied, well-drawn supporting cast and to fill in the town's history (a necessity: that rain interrupted an important baseball game that some adults, at least, still regard as unfinished business), but he balances perceptive explorations of personal and domestic issues perfectly with fine baseball talk and (eventually) absorbing play-by-play. Readers will cheer Roy on as he struggles to get his team in shape, clicks with a girl who is new to the game but turns out to have an unhittable natural screwball, and weathers some rough waters with moody Sturgis on the way to a rousing climax and a fitting resolution.-John Peters, New York Public Library (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The rain started in the fourth inning of the big game between two rival towns. The game was called and never replayed, because it has continued to rain for 22 years. Amid endless theories that attempt to explain the unexplainable, Roy's father has built a business based on the rain and townspeople have adjusted their lives to indoor pursuits, with outdoor activities taking place in other towns. And then it stops raining. Roy's stream-of-consciousness narration is so unfiltered that it is nearly impossible to discern relevant from extraneous information. There is a plethora of eccentric characters, changing loyalties and strange events. Scaletta tries too hard in every way: He mixes fantasy, mystery, coming-of-age angst, family dynamics, play-by-play baseball and more. While the outcome of the replayed baseball game and Roy's heroics are typical of the genre, there is no real denouement to all the other elements, and in the end readers probably won't care. (Fiction. 9-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1 To understand baseball, you have to understand percentages. For example, if a guy is hitting .250, he only has about one chance in a thousand of going five-for-five in a single game. Over a season, though, the odds get better. Like about one in seven. Not great, but not that bad. If he plays long enough, he'll probably do it. That's how a guy can go into every game feeling positive. He knows if he plays enough games, eventually he'll have a perfect day at the plate. It's the same thing with rain. Maybe you read in the paper every day that there's a 25 percent chance of rain. That means there's about one chance in a thousand of having it rain five days straight. It's not likely, but it's not impossible. If you're twelve years old, like I am, you've probably even seen it happen. If you take all the teams in the history of baseball, then percentages start making funny things happen. For example, Walt Dropo of Detroit once got twelve hits in a row; he went five-for-five one day and seven-for-seven the next. The odds of that are like one in two million, but there's been way more than two million tries, if you think about all the baseball players and all the games they ever played in, so it had to happen eventually. Dropo was just the guy who did it. That's how I explain the fact that it's been raining for twenty-two years in Moundville. The earth is a big place, and it's been around for a long time. If you think about all the towns in the world and all the years the earth has been around, it was bound to happen somewhere sooner or later. It just happened to be my town and my lifetime. It's percentages. I'm trying to explain this to Adam on the last day of baseball camp while we're packing up to go home. Camp is at the state university, and we've been sharing a dorm room about the size of a breadbox. "Everybody's hitting .250?" he asks me. "Even the DH?" "For the sake of argument, yeah." "Sounds like a pretty lousy baseball team." He shakes his head. "The manager would send some guys down or something. Maybe make a trade." "That's not the point." "It is so the point! If your whole team is batting .250, you don't wait around until the end of time because maybe eventually a guy goes five-for-five. You do something about it." "We can't do anything about the weather, though." "You can move." "It's not that easy. My dad's business is in Moundville." "He can start a business somewhere else." "He rainproofs houses," I remind him. "It's not like there's a big demand for that anywhere else." "I would move anyway," he says. "No baseball? That's nuts." "It's not such a bad place to live. Anyway, there's lots of places where it rains all the time. London. Seattle." "It doesn't rain every day for twenty-two years straight." "It could, though." "Whatever." I like Adam pretty well, but I'm kind of mad at him for dumping on Moundville. Sure, it's wet, but it's still my hometown. Fortunately, we're interrupted by a half dozen people practically knocking down the door. It's Steve and his family. Steve is also from Moundville. We've known each other since kindergarten. His parents and his little sisters and his grandma came down to watch the Camp Classic, and now they're all heading home. The Camp Classic is a four-team tournament meant to end camp with a bang. Adam and I were on the winning team. He pitched the first game, and I caught both games. My shins still feel like they're about to fall off at the knees, but it was worth it. "You're coming with us!" says one of Steve's sisters. It must be Shauna because she's wearing a red T-shirt. They color-code the twins so everyone can tell them apart. "Your dad can't make it!" the other sister, Sh Excerpted from Mudville by Kurtis Scaletta All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.