These themes will vary! It could be based off of some book mail I just received, pop culture, something personal to me, a headline from the news, a trend I noticed when I was buying books for my library system, etc. I hope you stick around to see all the themes and book recs I come up with!
Today’s Theme: Negro League Baseball
If you haven’t heard, last week the MLB decided to finally incorporate the stats from the Negro League to their record books. This in turn shook up a lot of things and now Josh Gibson from the Negro League has the highest batting average. Which even though this was a 3 year long research project, some still claim the information is wrong and or shouldn’t be incorporated. (Chile the racists is mad honey smh lol) So for today, I wanted to shine some light on the Negro League that is in fiction. In this one, it’s historical fiction and it also features a woman, Effa Manley, who is currently the only woman inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame. She winds up the owner of the Newark Eagles amongst the jeers, racism, and sexism that came with being a Black woman who owns a sports team.
This one is a MG book about a tween whose dream is to play baseball and meet his hero from the Negro League, Satchel Paige. While practicing with his Black team, they are accused of trespassing where the town’s white team plays and racial outrage sparks debates and more. They deem the only way to settle it is a game between the Black team and the white one. The story is set in North Carolina in 1935. This Two for Tuesday is kind of like a two in one. Not only do they both talk about the Negro League, but they both also talk about Satchel Paige. So naturally that made me want to know more about him too. Here’s some info on what I found out about him. I’m not a huge fan of baseball, but these two books are super high on my TBR and I can’t wait to get my hands on them!
Well, there you go! Here I’m just going to talk about why I grouped these two books together. I hope you enjoyed a look at this small part of the books. For a full synopsis of the book or to add it to your TBR, click the picture and it will take you to their Storygraph. The link on the caption will take you to it’s Goodreads.
What about you? Did you hear the news? Do you like baseball? One of these is out now and the other comes out in August. Let me know in the comments if you’re interested in either one!