- Parents’ Choice Award
- Washington State Governor’s Writers Award
- Best Multicultural Title, “Cuffies Award” – Publishers Weekly
- “Editors’ Choice” – San Francisco Chronicle
- “Choices,” Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC)
- “Pick of the Lists,” – American Bookseller
Summary: A Japanese American boy named “Shorty” watches with confusion and awe as he and his family are removed from their home and sent to an incarceration camp in the middle of an American desert. As social conditions start deteriorating within the camp, Shorty’s father decides to lead other Japanese Americans in building a baseball field at the camp and forming baseball teams. Shorty, who wasn’t a good baseball player back home, reaches a critical moment and must rise to the occasion. He also faces a similar situation during a game after the war.
“… [Mochizuki] captures the confusion, wonder and terror of a small child in such stunning circumstances with convincing understatement … the illustrations by Dom Lee … add a proper serious mood to this fine book.” – The New York Times Book Review
“Fine debuts for author, illustrator, and publisher.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Powerful … the baseball heading over the fence on the last page tugs at the heart of readers as it symbolizes freedom lost, and regained.” – School Library Journal
During August 1991, I received my first phone call from Philip Lee, who tells me he has founded a children’s picture book company called Lee & Low Books in New York City. He was searching across the country for authors and illustrators to launch his first set of books, and got my name through his wife Karen Chinn, a former Seattleite and colleague of mine at the International Examiner newspaper (see “About Ken” section). Up to that point, I had never authored anything in the field of children’s literature, but would I be interested in writing a children’s picture book? I remained open to the idea, and Philip sent me an article from an East Coast magazine about Japanese Americans forming baseball teams and playing the sport within the American incarceration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. A non-fiction story about this subject? he suggested. I decided I wanted to make it historical fiction, and create a young hero who hits not only one home run during a clutch situation, but two!
With good reviews – particularly a write-up in The New York Times Book Review – and over a half million copies of this book later sold, my career began as a children’s book author and presenter.
Ken Mochizuki 