BASEBALL IN APRIL AND OTHER STORIES by Gary Soto

Bibliographic Data:

Soto, G. (1990). Baseball in april and other stories. San Diego: Harcourt. ISBN 0152025731. P 107.

Summary:

Baseball in April and other stories includes 11 short stories written from the viewpoints of Mexican-American preteens.  In the title story, Baseball in April, two brothers try out for the Little League team for the third year in a row.  As events of the tryouts unfold, the brothers experience anxiety, jealousy, embarrassment, pride, and hope.  When they don’t make the team, the brothers will still have a chance at playing baseball in April.

Analysis:

For more than a year Veronica wanted a Barbie.  For her birthday, she got a similar version, but not the real thing.  This storyline, among others in Soto’s award winning book, resonates among many readers.  Similar tales of a time when we have wanted something but just couldn’t get it for some reason recall in our thoughts as we read.  In addition to relating to his audience, Soto incorporates aspects of minority living and language, real life emotions and problems, and ease of reading. 

The most obvious feature of Soto’s book is the Mexican-American setting.  Set in California, the characters are of Mexican heritage and speak English with Spanish intermingled.  They eat Mexican dishes and sing Spanish songs.  And like many minorities, money is an issue for the characters in the book.  For young people, readers can either relate to this culture, know someone of this culture, or are curious about another culture. 

Each conflict Soto writes about is believable and even likely for readers to have experienced some version of it.  For example, in The Karate Kid Gilbert longs to be like the glorified movie character and signs up for karate lessons.  The lessons prove to be boring and meaningless but Gilbert is afraid his mother will be upset if she feels he has wasted her money, so he chooses to continue for six months until his freedom comes with the gym closing down.  Readers may remember taking some sort of lessons; piano, gymnastics, or tennis.  In Mother and Daughter, Yollie has to wear an old dress, dyed black, to the school dance with Ernie.  But then it starts to rain and the dye begins to drip from her dress.  Humiliated, Yollie runs all the way home where she hollers in disrespect at her mother.  How many readers haven’t been embarrassed by their parents? Readers will relate to emotions in the other stories such as anger, guilt, hope, and desperation.  In the end, each character is able to carry on with life with little trouble, despite what happened in their particular story. 

The final strength to this book is the easiness of reading it.  Eleven stories over 107 pages makes each story around 10 pages.  Readers will read with ease, glancing to the Spanish glossary at the back if needed.  Reluctant readers will experience a sense of accomplishment as they finish each short story and move with no difficulty to the next story.  Though the stories are somewhat simple, the length of each story allows Soto to move through the events quickly, leaving readers no time for monotony. 

In some cases, stories can encompass weakness within their strengths.  For this book, there is enticement in the very real, everyday conflicts written about.  The drawback is the lack of excitement and worthiness in the characters.  The characters, though heroic in their situations and still heroic to readers, are not making over-the-top contributions to society or saving their baseball team from failure.  Typically, it’s the happy endings that readers flock to, nevertheless, Baseball in April and other short stories relates to readers in ways that are real.