Jackie and Me

March 1, 2013
A young girl who feels herself an outsider finds a mentor and friend in Jackie Robinson. Grossinger tells of growing up at her relatives' famous Catskills hotel, where she often felt overlooked, awkward, lonely and self-conscious. She was generally uninterested in the celebrities who visited the hotel, but the idea of meeting her hero, Jackie Robinson, was tremendously exciting, even though she was too shy to join in the greetings and photos. A kept promise, a game of pingpong and heart-to-heart talks led to a friendship that lasted for as long as Robinson lived. Through visits and letters, he helped her feel pride in her accomplishments; "Never give up" was his clarion call, and she took it to heart. As she grew older, she came to recognize how deeply he was affected by the difficulties of those early years and how his spirit and kindness inspired her. Grossinger tells her story simply, recalling those long-ago events with fondness and love in text that has the appearance of diary entries. Eye-catching, large-scale close-ups of Robinson and the author as a girl on bright, color-washed backgrounds placed on full- and double-page spreads neatly complement the text. Not always accurate in their depiction of Robinson, they nonetheless capture his personality with warmth. A lovely evocation of a man who changed baseball and America. (Picture book/memoir. 5-9)

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June 1, 2013

Gr 2-4-In this slight memoir, Grossinger draws a parallel between her feelings of not belonging and Jackie Robinson's experience as an African American baseball player in the 1950s. When the star athlete and his family stayed at the hotel in the Catskill Mountains owned by her cousins, the Grossingers, Robinson took a personal interest in young Tania by playing a game of Ping-Pong and listening to her concerns about feeling "on the outside looking in," and the two became lifelong friends. Illustrations show that living in the Grossinger's "castle" was difficult for the shy, awkward youngster even though famous celebrities visited often. The stylized, almost impressionistic collage artwork makes the 13-year-old look very different from one page to the next. While youngsters will learn a bit of trivia about Jackie's uniform number 42 that is worn each year on April 15th, the day he first played with the Dodgers as the first black player in the National League, more-informative books are available for learning about his significance to the game of baseball, such as Sharon Robinson's Jackie Robinson: American Hero (Scholastic, 2013).-Blair Christolon, Prince William Public Library System, Manassas, VA

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