The Aurora County All-Stars

by Deborah Wiles (Author)

Reading Level: 6th − 7th Grade

Twelve-year-old House Jackson--star pitcher and team captain of the Aurora County All-Stars--has been sidelined for a whole sorry year with a broken elbow. He's finally ready to play, but wouldn't you know that the team's only game of the year has been scheduled for the exact same time as the town's 200th-anniversary pageant.

Now House must face the pageant's director, full-of-herself Frances Shotz (his nemesis and perpetrator of the elbow break), and get his team out of this mess. There's also the matter of a mysterious old recluse who has died and left House a wheezy old dog named Eudora Welty--and a puzzling book of poetry by someone named Walt Whitman. Through the long, hot month of June, House makes surprising and valuable discoveries about family, friendship, poetry . . . and baseball.

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Kirkus

Starred Review
A poignant and humorous coming-of-age story.

School Library Journal

Starred Review
A slow-simmering stew of friendship and betrayal, family love and loyalty, and finding oneself.

Publishers Weekly

Starred Review
A home run for Wiles.

Review quotes

A Junior Library Guild Selection New York Public Library's One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing

Classification
Fiction
ISBN-13
9780152066260
Lexile Measure
670
Guided Reading Level
-
Publisher
Clarion Books
Publication date
March 01, 2009
Series
-
BISAC categories
JUV005000 - Juvenile Fiction | Boys & Men
JUV039020 - Juvenile Fiction | Social Themes | Adolescence
JUV070000 - Juvenile Fiction | Poetry (see also Stories in Verse)
Library of Congress categories
Death
Race relations
Baseball
Mississippi
Sexism
Pageants

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