In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson

by Bette Bao Lord, Marc Simont (Illustrator)

Overview

The hilarious and timeless story about an immigrant girl inspired by the sport she loves to find her own team—and to break down any barriers that stand in her way.

Shirley Temple Wong sails from China to America with a heart full of dreams. Her new home is Brooklyn, New York. America is indeed a land full of wonders, but Shirley doesn't know any English, so it's hard to make friends.

Then a miracle happens: baseball! It's 1947, and Jackie Robinson, star of the Brooklyn Dodgers, is everyone's hero. He proves that a black man, the grandson of a slave, can make a difference in America. By watching Jackie, Shirley begins to truly feel at home in her new country, and that America really is the land of opportunity—both on and off the field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780064401753
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/28/2003
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	18,641
Product dimensions:	0.00(w) x 0.00(h) x (d)
Lexile:	730L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Bette Bao Lord has based this story largely on the days when she herself was a newcomer to America. She is the author of Spring Moon, nominated for the American Book Award for First Novel, and Eighth Moon.

Marc Simont was born in 1915 in Paris. His parents were from the Catalonia region of Spain, and his childhood was spent in France, Spain, and the United States. Encouraged by his father, Joseph Simont, an artist and staff illustrator for the magazine L'Illustration, Marc Simont drew from a young age. Though he later attended art school in Paris and New York, he considers his father to have been his greatest teacher.

When he was nineteen, Mr. Simont settled in America permanently, determined to support himself as an artist. His first illustrations for a children's book appeared in 1939. Since then, Mr. Simont has illustrated nearly a hundred books, working with authors as diverse as Margaret Wise Brown and James Thurber. He won a Caldecott Honor in 1950 for illustrating Ruth Krauss's The Happy Day, and in in 1957 he was awarded the Caldecott Medal for his pictures in A Tree is Nice, by Janice May Udry.

Internationally acclaimed for its grace, humor, and beauty, Marc Simont's art is in collections as far afield at the Kijo Picture Book Museum in Japan, but the honor he holds most dear is having been chosen as the 1997 Illustrator of the Year in his native Catalonia. Mr. Simont and his wife have one grown son, two dogs and a cat. They live in West Cornwall, Connecticut. Marc Simont's most recent book is The Stray Dog.

Table of Contents

JANUARY Chinese New Year		1	(20)
FEBRUARY A Journey of Ten Thousand Miles		21	(20)
MARCH China's Little Ambassador		41	(10)
APRIL A Hungry Ghost		51	(18)
MAY Two Black Eyes and Wispy Whiskers		69	(16)
JUNE I Pledge a Lesson to the Frog		85	(10)
JULY Toscanini Takes a Walk		95	(10)
AUGUST Monsters		105	(12)
SEPTEMBER Secrets		117	(26)
OCTOBER The World Series		143	(6)
NOVEMBER Moon Cakes Without Grandfather		149	(8)
DECEMBER A Star-Spangled Christmas		157

Editorial Reviews

Lord writes with a warm authenticity and sparkling humor.

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