Product Description

The man who made the game of baseball, George Herman Ruth, wasn't always the Babe. Once he was a boy playing ball on a dirt lot.
Robert Burleigh and Mike Winner have created a stunning portrait of a legend--and of baseball's glory days.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #109707 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 32 pages

Amazon.com Review
"He has always had this swing. This easy, upthrusting swing. This 'pretty' swing, not taught by any coach. One day the Babe just swung--and it was there. It was his." Combining stirring, poetic prose and Mike Wimmer's realistic illustrations, Home Run conveys the feeling of excitement and awe that must have been present at a baseball game in which the great Babe Ruth played. Robert Burleigh, who previously collaborated with Wimmer on the award-winning Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh, writes this picture-book tribute "for my Father--who loved the game ... for my son, Eli, to help him learn the spirit of can-do." His great love for both shines through. Our stomachs knot and spirits soar as Ruth steps up to the plate. Home Run softly draws us into the story, and the illustrations, rendered in oil on canvas, have an expansiveness and glow that lift them from the page. The gentle tribute is enhanced by "vintage-style baseball cards" that highlight aspects of Babe Ruth's career ("The Bambino loved driving low-slung convertibles, donning silk shirts and coonskin coats, and downing huge meals"), allowing Burleigh the opportunity to include important information without destroying the perfect simplicity of the main story. A treasure for anyone with a love of the game, Home Run is also powerfully affecting for those new to the excitement it holds. (Click to see a sample spread. Illustration from Home Run by Robert Burleigh, illustration © 1998 by Mike Wimmer, reproduced by permission of Harcourt Brace & Company.) (Ages 5 and older) --Aimee Damman

From Publishers Weekly
Burleigh and Wimmer, the creative team behind Flight: The Journey of Charles Lindbergh, give a bravura encore performance, this time turning their attention to another 20th-century legend, Babe Ruth. The Sultan of Swat emerges in sharp relief, a multi-layered profile of one of the brightest and best of the boys of summer. In a series of poetic present-tense images, readers see the Babe at play ("there is only the echoey, nothing-quite-like-it sound and soft feel of the fat part of the bat on the center of the ball"), while a congruent series of old-fashioned baseball cards provide baseball aficionados with detailed information about George Herbert Ruth Jr., his statistics and his life ("Many people know that Babe's top home-run season was 1927, when he bashed 60 big ones for a record that would stand for more than 30 years"). This clever juxtaposition provides Burleigh with abundant creative latitude, and he makes the most of it, delivering a solid biographical snapshot tucked inside a valentine to the sport. Wimmer's larger-than-life oil portraits, marvels of realism tinged with idealism, recall Norman Rockwell. His elastic use of perspective plants readers behind the home plate to watch Babe's pop fly head skyward, at the base line as his feet round the bases, and even in front of his bat, just spitting distance from the mound where the pitcher cocks his leg to wind up for the throw. Wimmer indicates two brief flashbacks to Babe Ruth's youth in sepia tones, while the rest of the artwork is full-color, bathed in glorious light. It's a superlative tribute, and most definitely a grand slam for this talented duo. Ages 6-10.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Kindergarten-Grade 4?This lyrical picture-book account is a success on a couple of levels. With a flowing minimal text, Burleigh brings the Babe to life through the moment of one at bat. The focus is on Ruth's fluid swing, which remained true from his young years on the sandlots through the waning days of his stellar career with the New York Yankees. Wimmer's sprawling, photorealistic oil paintings depict the larger-than-life figure and his surroundings with folksy Norman Rockwell-like charm. Older readers will appreciate the replicas of vintage baseball cards that appear on almost every other page. While such contemporary stars as Mark McGwire and Ken Griffey, Jr. have been hitting home runs at a near record pace during this, and in recent, seasons, any comparison with Ruth can be dismissed when considering: "...in 1921, with 59 home runs, the Babe hit more than all other American League players put together!" The fine melding of text and art will be pure pleasure for young hardball fans and may spark interest in one of the many Ruth biographies available, or in other fiction titles about the legendary King of Clout such as Donald Hall's When Willard Met Babe Ruth (Browndeer Press, 1996).?Tom S. Hurlburt, La Crosse Public Library, WI
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A book that lives in the moment
This books opens with the Great Bambino as a child. Remindingyou of your own innocent childhood. It then leaps to his professinalcareer where it slows down to one at bat. (the moment) It is written with a grace for detail that makes you feel like part of the story. You hear the crack of the bat, feel the dirt under your spikes, the "soft hardness of the base", and hear the defening sound of the crowd. This book brings tears to my eyes everytime I read it to my daughter and my son. Maybe one day they will read it to their children and know why. END

For the child who loves baseball and has two left feet.
Purchased this for my nephew who is overweight, uncoordinated and loves playing baseball. Reading this to him increased his joy of the game and gave him confidence to keep trying to improve his own skills. Taught him to do best with the skills he had right now and even how to deal with successes in life. This level of understanding was terrific for children and adult alike. Excellent book for sharing special time with children.

Lyrical pictures of the Babe hitting a home run
When I first saw the cover painting by Mike Wimmer on "Home Run" I was not sure if it was supposed to be Babe Ruth. In his glory days the Bambino had a body like an inverted pyramid, with those broad shoulders tapering down to those thin little ankles and tiny feet, and there are some paintings in "Home Run: The Story of Babe Ruth" that do not especially look like the Babe. However, those are few and far between.

The text by Robert Burleigh comes in two parts. First, there is the book's narrative, a sort of lyric ode to the Babe that combines his discovering his "pretty" swing as a boy with a home run he hits off of a Red Sox pitcher years later. Second, under the narrative text there is the back of a faux-baseball card (from "The World Champion" series), that has biographical and statistical details about Ruth.

However, the centerpiece of this book is the time at bat that takes up the last half of the book. Earlier there is a striking painting of Ruth launching a pop-up; the view is from behind the catcher who has taken off his mask, all eyes turned to the sky and the small white ball rising into the sky. Wimmer offers several unique and compelling perspectives during the home run episode as well: the Red Sox first baseman craning his neck to follow the flight of the unseen ball, the eyes of Ruth watching it disappear into the stands, the Babe's foot on first base as the pitcher stands dejectedly on the mound.

There is a quote on the back-flap of the dust-jacket that says the "Chicago Sun-Times" described Wimmer's illustrations as "reminiscent of some of Normal Rockwell's best." Certainly there are strong similarities, especially in the painting of the fans reacting to Ruth's homerun. But with his emphasis on key details to tell the story Wimmer offers a decidedly different perspective from Rockwell that I really liked. Ultimately, it is the artwork rather than the narrative that makes this a lyrical book.