Grade Level: 3-7
Lexile Measurement: 590L

The central lesson of Skinnybones is to have confidence in yourself. Alex Frankovitch, is the smallest kid on his Little League baseball team. For Alex, the worst part about participating in Little League are the uniforms. He does not like how every year at the first practice, the coach shouts out each player’s name and they yell back what size they wear in front of everyone. Alex is ashamed of his size, so he decides to yell large when his coach calls his name. That night Alex had a dream about what the day the uniforms came in would be like. In his dream, when his coach yelled out his name and size, he stood up real slow and cool and then strolled over to the large pile of uniforms to choose pants and shirt. When he got to the table, he saw that his uniform was the only one in the large pile and all the other players uniforms were small. When he reached out to pick up his uniform, the whole team jumped up and started cheering because of how large he was. The actual day the uniforms come in, Alex walks over to the large pile and picks his up. When the coach instructs the players to try their uniforms on, Randy, one of the larger players on the team, cannot get his shirt over his head. So, the coach checks Alex’s uniform and informs him that he ordered a small for him and not a large. Alex swaps his uniform with Randy and is devastated. From this part of the book, readers can see that Alex is not confident with his weight or size. Instead of being ashamed with his size however, Alex should be confident with his body whether he is a size small or a size large.
Although Alex has participated in Little League baseball for six years, his skills in the game are subpar. Every year, Alex has won an award for being the most improved in baseball. Alex believes this is the league’s way of telling him he is not very good. His nemesis, T.J. Stoner, is the league’s best player. One day Alex gets tired of hearing T.J. brag about how good he is and pretends to be a great pitcher. Alex says to his friend Brian as they pass T.J. on the playground “Hey, Brian, I forgot to tell you about my baseball practice last night. My coach let me try out for pitcher, and he said I had one of the best curve balls he’s ever seen.” T.J. hears Alex making this comment and challenges Alex to a pitching contest. Alex later tries to get out of the contest using humor. Alex loses badly and ends up making a fool of himself. In this part of the book, Alex is ashamed in his athletic ability and jealous of T.J.’s. Instead of being embarrassed of himself, Alex should have displayed confidence and stood up to T.J. telling him that he is proud of who he is.
When T.J.’s team is playing Alex’s much-worse team during the Little League season, T.J. lets the entire school know about the upcoming game. T.J. is set to break a league record, so even the media show up. Prior to the start of the game, Alex was afraid that T.J. was going to make him look bad in front of everyone. When Alex is up to bat, he bunts the ball and runs to first base, T.J. stands waiting on the base. Alex distracts T.J. by yelling “Booga Booga,” and T.J. drops the ball. Alex heads to second, but the umpire throws him out for unsportsmanlike conduct. Alex’s coach tries to argue that Alex has not broken any rules, but his efforts fail. Instead of worrying about T.J., and trying to make T.J. look bad, Alex should have been proud with his own accomplishment of hitting the ball.
At the end of the book, Alex receives good news about the Kitty Fritters cat food TV commercial contest. The principle makes an announcement on the speaker informing the student body that Alex won a contest and will be featured in a commercial. Up until that point in the book, Alex had been jealous of T.J. When Alex heard this news, he realized that although T.J. was famous for his baseball skills, he was going to famous for his own talent-his sense of humor. Alex realized that he did not need to be envious of others after all and that he has good qualities of his own as well. ( )

I don't know why, but this is one of the books I read when I was in grade school. The book just popped in my head so I thought I would see if it was on goodreads, and it was. It was such a funny book when I was younger I remember reading it twice, because that was me at the time. And I remember it being fun to read, I don't know the exact date but 89 was pretty close to when I read it ( )

I enjoyed this book, mostly because of the humorous characters. First of all, Alex is a very relatable character. He's the class clown- which almost everyone has had experiences with during the primary years. He makes an outlandish bet with fellow classmate TJ, and fails miserably. Then, when the two boys' baseball teams go against each other, Alex fails again. Readers can be inspired by Alex's determination, whether or not he fails. Park also teaches a very valuable lesson: it's okay to fail. However, by the end of the book, Alex ends up winning a contest. This encourages readers to keep going and never give up. ( )

Barbara Park knows funny. Skinnybones is a great read aloud, especially for boys. 2nd grade and up. ( )