A High Five for Glenn Burke

Agay black baseball player posthumously inspires a sixth grade white boy who is ready-ish to come out.

Baseball enthusiast Silas Wade opens the book by giving a colorful class presentation about Glenn Burke. Burke was a once-well-known major league player who invented the high-five and eventually left the sport after enduring isolation and harassment for being gay. Silas leaves that last part out, but heralding his hero in front of a crowd is the silent start of his own coming out. Further testing the waters, he tells his best friend, Zoey (a champion robot builder), he’s gay and finds that there’s a bouncy kind of freedom that comes from saying who he really is. Inspirational YouTube videos encourage Silas to come out to Coach Webb, show more an adult who embodies the understanding, guidance, protection, and encouragement that all queer kids should have. But when Silas gets nervous about everything changing and wants to backpedal into the closet, circumstances put him at a crossroads: continue to lie for self-preservation or live out loud like Glenn Burke wasn’t able to. Silas is white, but Zoey has a Spanish surname, and his baseball teammates and one coach are black and brown. (One notable moment includes an explanation from the coaches about why monkey insults are racist.) As the narrative foundation is established, there are overt explanations of settings and characters that aren’t additive, but these superfluous tendencies dissolve about 50 pages in. Insights into Silas’ home life feel bittersweet and real with parents fumbling to do the best they can, but Silas’ struggle is the central story.

Beleaguered tolerance strikes out; loud, proud love wins the game. (Fiction. 10-12)

-Kirkus Review show less

Silas is the life of the team and goes all out when he plays baseball. He chooses to do an ELA project about Glenn Burke, credited as an inventor of the high five. Burke was also gay, but SIlas doesn't mention that in his presentation even though it is one of the reasons that Burke is so important to him.
Silas is struggling with his own decision to come out. He does come out to his best friend, Zoe, and immediately wonders if it was the right thing for him to do. His parents notice something is going on and want to express their support. His baseball coach is an amazing adult mentor.

This is an awesome chapter book about the story of a 6th grade student named Silas who is trying to find his true identity. It begins with him doing a presentation over a gay MLB player from the 1970s. Silas then realizes the he should also start to come out as gay since he thinks that some of his teammates might begin to notice anyway. I think this is a great book for any middle school classroom. You never know when one of your students is going through this exact or similar situation, so this could be really helpful for students.

This book is a heart-warming story about Silas Wade a baseball player who decides he is ready to come out as gay by doing a report on Glenn Burke, an openly gay Major League Baseball player back in the 1970s. This story is a great book for young students just trying to find themselves in this crazy world we live in, and this book can be the catalyst to do that. It is a compelling story showing that we are never alone in tough times and that someone is always going to be there for us.

The story of a middle-school kid learning to be himself, woven with the real history of Glenn Burke--the first professional baseball player to come out as gay.

Silas has a secret he shares with his coach and best friend but thinks he did hte wrong thing