Yes, two baseball books in a row. I know. I can hardly believe it either. I can hardly believe I’ve read three baseball books in the last month, let alone liked them all.

There are going to be some happy sports-book-loving kids (okay, let’s face it – boys, for the most part) out there next year.

(My unscientific assessment that boys read sports books far, far, far more than girls do is based on over five years of working at an independent children’s bookstore and having…two regular girl customers that I can remember who ever wanted to read a sports book that didn’t involve horseback riding or ice skating.)

Anyway. MUDVILLE!

Great title, first of all. You wonder if it’s going to be about Casey. If you love baseball, that’s great. (If you don’t love baseball, you’re most likely not going to read this book.) If it’s not about Casey, that’s okay too – you know it’s about baseball because there’s one on the cover, which is also great. Love the jersey-like title font.

So. Great cover. Great title. And a first-time author, which always has me disposed to read in a good mood.

The good mood lasts, because this is a good book.

Roy lives in Moundville, where it has been raining for longer than the 12 years he’s been alive. It started raining 22 years ago in the middle of a baseball game against Moundville rival Sinister Grove, and it hasn’t stopped since. Roy loves baseball and would love nothing more than to play baseball in Moundville, but you can’t play in the rain. And the mud. So he has to go away to baseball camp or to visit friends in neighboring towns to get his love of the game on. It’s not enough, so he’s hoping to go further away to school next year so he can play on a real school team. Roy’s dad rainproofs Moundville houses for a living – clearly a thriving business – so the school thing should be possible.

Roy’s life is thrown into upheaval when he comes home from baseball camp to discover that his dad’s taken in a foster kid – Sturgis. No warning, and no real explanation. And stranger than that? A few days later the rain stops. Just like that. No warning, and no real explanation.

That’s okay with Roy, though, because it means baseball’s back on in Moundville! It also means that his dad’s business is all washed up, so there won’t be any private school next year. Roy consoles himself by starting up a team right in his hometown. Turns out Sturgis is a really good pitcher, and Roy figures that with Sturgis on the mound and Roy catching behind the plate, they’ll be ready to take on any team that comes their way. They might just be ready to finish that game that was started 22 years ago.

Sturgis, however, may have other ideas.

There’s a lot going on here. I’m a sucker for the smallest hint of magical realism in a book, and it’s here in spades. Why did the rain start? Why did it stop? Did Sturgis have anything to do with it? Who is he, anyway? What role did Roy’s dad play in that old game? What role will Roy play in the current one? And does the future of Moundville depend on the outcome? And what if the rain does start again?

Scaletta’s got a nice light touch with some of the harder issues of family in this book, which keeps it from getting depressing even when the subject matter might be. He also explains some statistical stuff as if a 12 year old were actually explaining it, which I appreciated – I got a C- in statistics in college.

(And did I mention I don’t really like baseball? You should see me when I get dragged to games and run out of food to eat and my husband won’t talk to me because he’s, you know, watching the game and keeping score in that weird old-school way. Once he asked me to keep up for him while he went to the bathroom. That was hilarious.)

Whoops. Back to the writing. The voice is great here – Scaletta’s really got the 12 year old thing down. The plot’s got a very nice flow to it – there are a lot of surprises in this book, and some of them could have been jarring. They weren’t. He weaves the sports and the family and the mystery together with the same careful stitches that close the leather on a baseball, with the same end result: a lot of game in one small package.

He’s got some really good characterization at play here, too. Roy’s a pretty normal kid surrounded by an awful lot of weirdness. Every player on his team’s got some little quirk or other. His dad’s a terrible cook and not the best communicator – he and Roy tend to talk mostly through baseball. His mom’s off being a flight attendant all over the world, anywhere but Moundville, anywhere out of that rain. And Sturgis? Well, Sturgis is a bit of a mystery – at least for awhile.

There are a lot of questions here, and some of them even get answered. I’m glad that not all of them do. One question I’m sure people will want the answer to: when is Scaletta’s next novel coming out?

Publisher: Random House

Pub Date: February 2009