Amelia Bedelia Steps Up to Bat

Spring, that pleasant time of year marked by sunny skies and verdant grasses, is well on its way. In anticipation of that clement season, Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia finds Peggy Parish's perky heroine delayed from a trip home from the grocery store by a bunch of sad sacks in baseball uniforms. Their team has lost a player. Amelia Bedelia wants to help. But is a crash course enough to put this ultimate rookie wise to the ways of the game?

Parish's series is a particular delight for any enthusiastic student of English, since the majority of the humor derives from linguistics. It just goes to show how many idioms there are in our language and how difficult it can be for newcomers to the speech to grasp them. I'm not sure why Amelia is always so hopelessly confused. Perhaps some explanation is provided in the first volume, which I've never read. Whatever the reason, though, Amelia takes things very literally, and when you're playing baseball, that leads to all sorts of confusion.

Although the children have uniforms and a score board, the game they play seems to be without the interference of adults. We don't see any coaches, managers or referees ordering the kids around. There doesn't even seem to be an audience, though perhaps the Wallace Tripp's illustrations just don't extend that far. We don't see empty bleachers or some similar situation; we just see nothing but the players at close range. At any rate, if this is a self-managed team of the Charlie Brown variety, I suppose that would explain why there are no rules forbidding an adult from participating.

It's certainly not as though they have much of an unfair advantage with Amelia on board. Rather, they have to worry about her shoving the batter out of the way so she can catch the ball, thus fulfilling her duty as catcher, or literally stealing their bases after she gives the ball a great big whack, and her ornate Revolutionary War-era uniform must be distracting. But Amelia is always eager to please, so maybe her can-do attitude will make the game more enjoyable for everyone, no matter what the final score turns out to be.

Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia is 60 pages of fun for baseball enthusiasts and anyone with an ear for puns. Because of its length and the inclusion of so many terms specific to the sport, I'd recommend it for children a little further along on the beginning reader spectrum. But anyone who understands what a pop fly and a base hit are ought to find this book a home run.