Good children's book. Baseball-oriented. Fantasy/fiction. Cute. Long, but easy-going. ( )

It wasn’t until I picked up this book to start reading it that I caught an important point from the back cover - “Hyperion – Paperbacks for Children” and the quote from the Today Show “A home run of a kids’ story”. Alas, in my haste to pick up another book by Chabon, I had grabbed this novel for children. But a 500-page children’s book? It didn’t really make sense. So I dove in to see what I would find (after all, I can still read A Wrinkle in Time and enjoy it.)

My only regret is that I wish I hadn’t known it was a children’s book. Would I have thought it too simplistic? I doubt it. This is a very involved tale with different images around every turn. Would I have thought the writing itself “dumbed down”? Maybe. But the conversations and the writing match the hero of the tale. And the one thing knowing this was a children’s book did was make me imagine reading this out loud to kids – and that was a very easy thing to imagine.

At the start, I had my small quibbles. Why do all these stories start the same – a misfit who has lost a parent (this time the mother) struggling in a new environment who has to go on a quest to save the remaining parent. But these quibbles disappeared quickly. Chabon has wrapped the mythos of baseball with a newly defined mythology of alternate worlds. These alternate worlds could have also slipped into cliché – there’s the requisite elfin-like creatures, and giants, and yeti, and coyote, and sometimes what seems like the kitchen sink – but he never lets them act like clichés; giving them personalities that match expectations but build into more. The entire thing is wrapped in a slightly different package and, while I didn’t warm immediately to the entire story (I think I was still put off by that whole “children’s book” thing), I soon found myself looking forward to what new things Chabon was going to deliver in each step of the journey.

And the use of baseball is what takes this over the edge – makes it more than a nice little tale. The marrying of baseball with Chabon’s alternate worlds is what makes this book work and provides humor that any baseball fan can enjoy (warning to all American League fans, Chabon is obviously not a fan of the designated hitter). The culmination is particularly effective – every child’s nightmare (that is, every child who has played baseball) is turned into the triumph that saves us all.

Fun and entertaining. ( )

What a fun book. Chabon is a master writer and his creativity is superb. With baseball as a backdrop, he creates multiple worlds without getting lost; he holds the boundaries and doesn't let it run away from the reader.
I was brought to tears at the end. ( )

Looking for a good fantasy quest novel? You might have overlooked Summerland, thinking it was just about baseball, but it is much more than that. Our very reluctant hero is Ethan Feld, who is recruited for his save the world mission by the farishers, residents of the Summerlands (a parallel world to the Middling, which is where we are, and the Winterlands). Ethan becomes more determined to complete his mission when he finds out that his inventor father is in the clutches of Coyote, who is trying to use his skills to end the worlds. Along with his little league teammates Jennifer T. and Thor, Ethan picks up help along the way from a Sasquatch that they liberate, a werefox, a tiny giant, and other assorted characters–all who make up the baseball team charged with saving the world. Over the course of their journey, they play many games (and meet many American folk heroes), but the final game, the one against Coyote and his team, will determine the fate of the worlds. ( )

Although he is “the worst baseball player in the history of the game”, Ethan Feld finds himself working with a 100-year-old talent scout to help a fairies save the world and Ethan’s father. Ethan and his teammates have to travel through several parallel worlds, including the baseball-rabid Summerland. In the end, the fate of the universe may just hinge a baseball game.