The Aurora County All-Stars (by Deborah Wiles)

In his small Mississippi town, House's tiny baseball team only gets to play one game a year against another team. Last year House had to miss it because of a broken elbow. This year it looks like it may be cancelled because of a pageant on the same day, directed by the girl who broke his arm. But with the help of three dead people -- his mother, his elderly neighbor, and Walt Whitman -- House just may be able to make a "symphony true" out of the whole mess.

There's a very rare and wonderful writer's trick that only a very few authors have ever been able to pull off, in which a silly and essentially meaningless (outside the book) phrase is, by the power of the writing and story, turned into something not only meaningful, but powerfully emotional. Harper Lee did it with "Hey, Boo." Patricia MacLachlan did it with "Rock, paper, scissors." And now Deborah Wiles does it with "I got a toad to swallow." Southern writers have an intimate and loving relationship with the English language that eludes those from pretty much anywhere else, and author Wiles is a modern inheritor of that proud tradition.

This kind of writing is a palimpsest, in which the story is just the top layer, the carrier wave, of something far richer and deeper -- in this case the haunting, aching beauty of a child struggling to grow. The story is one that most kids will love. It's funny, at times silly, with warmly delineated characters (many of whom have appeared in the author's two other novels), and some great sports action. But, in that rich, gorgeous, wisely empathetic style that it seems only Southern writers can do, this very accessible story will draw young readers in, and then carry them to a greater understanding of others, of themselves -- and of Walt Whitman.

Author: Deborah Wiles
Publisher: Harcourt Brace
Publication date: August 1, 2007
Number of pages: 242
Hardcover price: $16.00
Read Aloud: 9
Read Alone: 10