Synopses & Reviews
Chapter OneIntroducing Ezra
Ezra Feldman's father knew six different languages. He had a doctorate in history, and he could do hard arithmetic problems in his head. His hobbies were reading history and sociology books. He had a photographic memory and could play a whole chess game without using a board. He just moved the pieces around inside his head. In short, he understood all sorts of long and complicated things. But there were two things he didn't understand at all. He didn't understand Ezra, and he didn't understand baseball.
Ezra was almost ten years old, and he liked baseball more than anything else in the world. He listened to baseball games on the radio, and he watched baseball games on television. When he read books, they were books about baseball. When he talked, he talked a lot about baseball. At night when he slept, he often dreamed about baseball.
"Ezra would eat and drink baseball if he could," his mother said laughingly.
"Why do you want to look at that?" Mr. Feldman would ask, whenever he saw his son entranced before a baseball game on TV. "That's nothing but a lot of grown men taking turns hitting a ball with a stick. What a waste of time!" he complained. He had no patience for any sports.
Ezra had an older brother named Harris. He was nineteen years old and away at college. When Harris was nine, going on ten, he hadn't been interested in baseball. He had spent his time doing experiments with his chemistry set, and by the time Harris was
ten he had memorized the entire periodic table. Mr. Feldman couldn't understand how two boys with the same parents could be so different.
"Don't forget, we didn't live in Flushing when Harris was young," Mrs. Feldmanreminded her husband. Flushing was where Ezra lived, and it was also the home of Ezra's favorite team, the New York Mets. Shea Stadium, where they played, was within walking distance from the house Ezra's parents had bought four years before. Harris had spent his formative years in Mahwah, New Jersey, where there was no baseball team.
A typical conversation between Ezra and his father went this way:
"Dad, watch out! You're blocking the TV screen. The bases are loaded, and there are two men out. The man at the plate has three balls and two strikes. This is the payoff pitch coming up."
"I can't understand a word you're saying," Mr. Feldman would grumble. "Why should a boy your age sit around watching grown men acting like fools? It's ridiculous!''
Ezra groaned, partly because his father continued to block the television screen and partly because the man at bat had struck out.
Even though he had explained them to him a hundred times, his father kept forgetting the rules of baseball. He still insisted that RBI meant "rubbish brought inside." He couldn't remember "runs batted in." And if Ezra told him that somebody hit a double, Mr. Feldman always asked, "Does that mean they got two points?" Ezra didn't know how a person who could read ancient Greek could be that dumb.
Mrs. Feldman said it was because Ezra's father had grown up in Europe, where baseball is not a popular sport. Mr. Feldman had been born in Germany and had been sent to England before the Second World War. After the war he came to the United States, but it was too late. "I think you have to be born in America to appreciate baseball," Mrs. Feldman explained to her son. "It's the same with pumpkin pie." Indeed, Mr.Feldman didn't like pumpkin pie either, and both Ezra and his mother loved it. Even Harris, born in Chicago and raised in New Jersey, liked pumpkin pie despite his indifference to baseball.
Pumpkin pies came in the fall, just when the baseball season was ending. They were a small compensation. But Ezra kept watching the. calendar and counting the days until February. In February, spring training began, and the newspapers would be filled with more baseball information.
Ezra's favorite month of the year was April when the baseball season opened and his birthday occurred. His birthday was April first, and the baseball season usually opened a few days later.
"April is when the income tax is due," Mr. Feldman would remember. He forgot the new baseball season, but at least he remembered the taxes and his son's birthday. Two and a half weeks before Ezra's tenth birthday, his father came home with an early gift, an electronic chess game for them to share. But sharing a chess game wasn't like sharing a pumpkin pie with his mother. For one thing, Mr. Feldman played with the chess game much more than his son did. Ezra understood the basic rules of chess, but the game wasn't exciting like baseball. Besides, when he played chess with his father, he always knew the outcome of the game in advance. Mr. Feldman won every time.
"You have to lose a lot of games and understand the reasons why you lost before you can win," his father explained. Unfortunately, instead of being encouraged, Ezra found this information more discouraging than ever.
"What's the matter with you?" complained Mr. Feldman. "Harris was beating me when he was your age."
"Ezra is just as smart as Harris, in his own way,"Mrs. Feldman said, defending their son. "Someday he'll surprise us. just be patient."
Mrs. Feldman was a radiologist, and at work she was called Dr. Feldman. She worked much longer hours at North Shore Hospital than Mr. Feldman (who was also called Dr. Feldman) worked at Queens College, where he taught. When she came home, she relaxed by listening to classical music on the stereo. She also liked to do crossword puzzles. She was quite good at them, but she could never have finished a puzzle without the assistance of her husband and son. If she needed to know the name...
Synopsis
Erza's father cannot understand why his nine-year-old son would rather rot his brains watching men swing big wooden sticks than read a book or play chess. An unwanted car trip, a grumpy old professor, and a surprising chess victory may help father and son find a little common ground.
Synopsis
Ezra Feldman, almost ten, likes baseball more than anything else in the world. But his father cannot understand why his son would rather rot his brains watching men swinging big wooden sticks than read a book or play chess. Can an unwanted car trip, a grumpy old professor, and a surprising chess victory help father and son find a little common ground--and convince Ezra's dad that cheering for the national pastime isn't completely off base?Ezra Feldman, almost ten, likes baseball more than anything else in the world. But his father cannot understand why his son would rather rot his brains watching men swinging big wooden sticks than read a book or play chess. Can an unwanted car trip, a grumpy old professor, and a surprising chess victory help father and son find a little common ground--and convince Ezra's dad that cheering for the national pastime isn't completely off base?
About the Author
Johanna Hurwitz is the author of over five dozen books for young readers. She is the recipient of many state awards, including the Texas Bluebonnet Award, the Kentucky Bluegrass Award, and the Garden State Children's Choice Award. She lives in Great Neck, NY.
Johanna Hurwitz always knew she wanted to be a writer. She started by telling stories to her brother, who is six years her junior, and she's been making up stories ever since. Born and raised in New York City, she earned her B.A. degree from Queens College and went on to receive a master's in library science from Columbia University. She embarked on a career as a children's librarian, but she never forgot that one day she wanted to write books, too.
She worked at the New York Public Library and in a variety of other public and school library positions. She also taught graduate courses in children's literature and storytelling at Queens College. When she and her husband, Uri -- a college teacher and writer-and their children, Nomi and Beni, moved to Long Island, she continued her library work.
Although she had told original stories to her children, it was not until they were well along in school that Mrs. Hurwitz actually began to write down her stories. That's why, when children ask her how long it takes to write a book, she replies that her first, Busybody Nora, took her whole life.
But since then she has been writing with regularity, portraying with humor and sympathy the everyday incidents that are so important to children. She is particularly fond of seven- to nine-year-olds, because they are " so very open and get excited about small things," and she enjoys writing realistic fiction for and about them.
That these youngsters are equally fond of Mrs. Hurwitz's books is obvious. She has received many child-chosen state awards, including the Texas Bluebonnet Award, the Wyoming Indian Paintbrush Award, the Kentucky Bluegrass Award, the Garden State Children's Choice Award, the West Virginia Children's Book Award, and others.
In recent years, Johanna Hurwitz has crisscrossed the United States from Juneau, Alaska, to Jackson, Mississippi, and from San Diego, California, to St. Albans, Vermont. She has even spoken abroad, from Morocco to Mozambique and from Portugal to Nicaragua. On these trips she has met and spoken to schoolchildren, teachers, librarians, and parents. She has made many new friends and has often brought home new ideas for her next book.