Babe Ruth Saves Baseball!

June 1, 2005
Gr. 1-3. Grinning broadly as he looms monumentally over everyone in Walz's exuberant cartoons, Babe Ruth cuts a truly heroic figure for Murphy's easy-to-read tribute to the greatest ball player of them all. The author also adds some dimension to the Babe's oft-told tale, suggesting that Ruth's true greatness rests not so much in his statistical totals as in the way that his character and exciting style of play redeemed baseball in the wake of the Black Sox scandal of 1919. It's a cogently made argument--and the lighthearted tone in which Murphy delivers it may make this more appealing than the overheated melodrama of Robert Burleigh's " Home Run" (1998). A solid hit for the Step into Reading series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)