Summerland (2002)

I went into this one expecting a coming-of-age story about baseball. I’m not sure how I completely missed the fact that it’s a fantasy adventure tale. The other work I’ve read of Chabon’s has been for adults, so this was an interesting change of pace.

Ethan is an 11-year-old living in a quiet town in Washington. His mother passed away and his brilliant but distracted father (a bit of an absent-minded professor) is too caught up in his work to realize how much Ethan is struggling in their new home. He is on the local baseball team, but is a horrible player. Then one day he starts to see some odd creatures.

Soon he’s off on an adventure with his friend Jennifer T, oddball Thor and a strange collection of misfits, including a tiny giant, a Sasquatch, and other creatures. They can travel between the branches of the Tree of Life to the different worlds. They are traveling across the Summerland as they try to find Ethan’s father.

In order to pass through certain areas they must play games of baseball with the creatures that live there. I’m not a baseball fan, so that recurring theme made the book feel a bit long to me. I loved the other fantasy elements though.

BOTTOM LINE: It’s sweet and fun with a few darker twists. A perfect fit for teen readers, particularly those who love baseball. It’s a bit on the long side, but it’s a great quest book for young adult readers. ( )

My better half recommended this book to me to read, esp. as summer was drawing nearer. In fact, she said that I had better read it next or else or something to that effect) I'm glad she did though, because it was a wonderful book that mixed baseball and legends from different sources with some science fiction/fantasy to boot, all while being a story about kids who find out who they really are-- on a rather unexpected journey with unexpected travel companions. I love those kinds of stories, and so I loved this one, too.

I think actually I would give this book 3/5 stars but mainly because I dislike baseball, which is an ongoing theme. Still, the sense of adventure is key and, for the most part, it would be a great book to read to kids who are a little older (think fourth grade and up). However, I have said it before and I will say it again-Michael Chabon has yet to write anything nearly as impressive as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and, to be blunt, everything else I have read by him is a bit disappointing in comparison.

This book has a great deal of imagination, though. It's a fairy tale world that collides with the humans and most specifically children in the human world. There is evil, a plot to end the world, and a great deal of fantasy baseball. I'm sure fans of fantasy and sports would love this book to bits. ( )

Summerland is an ebuliant quodlibet! A little Lord of the Rings, a little Alice in Wonderland, just a shade of Harry Potter, *a lot* of folklore and a lot of baseball combine to make a great story. And also a great and meaningful ending as well. A great between-innings read! ( )

A real weaving of Norse and American Northwest Indian mythology.
Ethan Feld is a motherless 11-year old who shows no talent for baseball and wants to quit the team, until he is unexpectedly (and erroneously) called upon to save the Universe. Together with his friends and teammates Jennifer T. and Thor, Ethan sets out to find his kidnapped father, “scampering” into another world via Summerland, a baseball meadow that is one of the few crossing points not yet disconnected by shapeshifter Coyote in his plan to destroy the worlds of the Tree of Life. Ethan, Jennifer T., Thor and a bizarre assortment of creatures that include fairies, Sasquatch and a vertically challenged giant are pitted against the fiercest, most avid baseball players in the Universe. They play for safe passage across hostile lands in a hopeless race to reach Murmury Well before Coyote, with help from Ethan’s hapless father, can poison the waters that sustain the Tree of Worlds.
The story moves at a suspenseful pace switching between the protagonists’ odyssey and the antagonist’s progress. Chabon’s writing style employs a wild mixture of humor, horror, baseball culture, nanotechnology, mythology, shamanism and tall tale to craft the plot, drawing on the rich heritage of Norse, Pacific Northwest Indian and Frontier American story telling. The length may put off younger readers, but it’s hard to imagine a more entertaining read for a fantasy fan or a more incongruous crew of unlikely heroes. This book could make reading assignments and genre research look fun. ( )