This book is about the early days of baseball when there was a separate Negro league as well as a White league. It tells the story of the Negro players and their hard lives on the roads, as well as the White players who had much better food and living conditions. The author mentions that many people knew that the prejudices were wrong, but nobody wanted to challenge the current conditions. One day the manager of the Dodgers decided that he wanted to recruit the best players for his team, regardless of race. This is how an African American man named Jackie Robinson became the first black player to try out for a Major League baseball team.
After reading this book with my class, I would use it to spark some conversations about sportsmanship, friendship, and equality. I would also use it to begin to talk about the different types of conflict (character vs self, character vs nature, etc.). The kids could then go back through the story and identify examples of these different types of conflict.
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