Albert's Ballgame
with audio recording
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
It is springtime in Pleasant Valley, home of Albert the duck, the hero of several previous books by Leslie Tryon, including Albert's Thanksgiving and Alberts Alphabet. What is the industrious Albert involved in this time?
Springtime is the opening season for America's favorite pastime. It's time to play ball, and Albert turns his energies to coaching the local team. There are beanballs and knuckleballs, fly balls and foul balls and maybe even a home run in a game full of the joys and mishaps that all such games entail. Leslie Tryon's artwork is full of Spring Valley's familiar friends as well as heartwarming detail that places the reader smack in the middle of the park. An outing to be cherished.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Easily eclipsing her brief narrative, Tryon's (Albert's Alphabet; Albert's Thanksgiving) rollicking gouache art scores the biggest hit here, displaying the nattily clad animal residents of Pleasant Valley engaged in their favorite rite of spring: playing and watching baseball. Albert, cast as team manager, is curiously absent from most of Tryon's busy illustrations, an omission that may bewilder the amiable duck's fans. But panels and full-page pictures depict plenty of good-natured mayhem, and tracking the capricious "beanballs," "knuckleballs" and "chuckle balls" pitched in the riotous game will keep kids on their toes. The teammates' facial expressions are especially comical as batters try to outwit fielders by sending "stray balls and spray balls, curve balls and swerve balls." Some visual highlights: spectators balance a beach ball as they perform the "wave"; and a frog and an ostrich who have collided in the outfield stare forlornly at a fly ball that has fallen to the ground. Perky. Ages 5-8.
