Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the Republic Sung in the Year 1888 (Caldecott Honor Book, 2001)
Reading level: Ages 9-12
"And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout; But there is no joy in Mudville-mighty Casey has struck out." Those lines have echoed through the decades, the final stanza of a poem published pseudonymously in the June 3, 1888, issue of the San Francisco Examiner. Its author would rather have seen it forgotten.
Buy Casey at the Bat: A Ballad of the...
Instead, Ernest Thayer's poem has taken a well-deserved place as an enduring icon of Americana. Christopher Bing's magnificent version of this immortal ballad of the flailing 19th-century baseball star is rendered as though it had been newly discovered in a hundred-year-old scrapbook. Bing seamlessly weaves real and trompe l'oeil reproductions of artifacts-period baseball cards, tickets, advertisements, and a host of other memorabilia into the narrative to present a rich and multifaceted panorama of a bygone era. A book to be pored over by children, treasured by aficionados of the sport-and given as a gift to all ages: a tragi-comic celebration of heroism and of a golden era of sport.
About the Author
Ernest L. Thayer (1863-1940), student of philosophy and manager of wool mills, contributed CASEY AT THE BAT to his friend and classmate William Randolph Hearst's Examiner.
Christopher Bing, trained at Rhode Island School of Design, has contributed numerous editorial illustrations to such publications as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.He lives with his family in Lexington, MA