THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS
by Deborah Wiles
Harcourt Children's Books
ISBN-10: 0152060685
ISBN-13: 9780152060688
Ages 10-up
256 pages

Deborah Wiles has created, in the guise of a young boy named House Jackson and a wondrous place called Aurora County, a world that is as easy and exciting to inhabit as Whoville or Nancy Drew's River Heights. It looks like our world and it sounds like our world, but the things that happen there take us out of our everyday existence and wrap us up in the complex and interesting emotions that drive THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS.

National Book Award finalist Wiles (EACH LITTLE BIRD THAT SINGS) has written a fantastic book about baseball and all the things that make it such a long-standing American game classic. When House, the 12-year-old wunderkind who is both the Aurora County All-Stars captain and the star pitcher, returns from a forced rehab for a bad arm, he finds that it's not so easy to saunter gracefully back into his team and its old habits.

When Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd, the elderly man for whom House had been both reader and confidante throughout his time off, dies, House finds his way back to his first love: baseball. But the only game of the year for the All-Stars is scheduled for the same day as Aurora County's 200th anniversary celebration. Frances Shotz, the nasty tween who broke House's elbow in the first place, happens to be the director of the event, and miscommunication and trouble ensue. However, like the widely-quoted "Casey at the Bat" proffers, baseball in and of itself offers a dramatic tension that underlines the rapidly heated situation in Aurora County, and the two kids work out a plan that will have readers of all ages cheering from the sidelines.

Using Walt Whitman's beautiful words and adding splashes of local color with newspaper reports from the County periodical, Wiles creates a world that practically jumps off the page with imagination and an enthusiasm rarely seen in young adult fiction these days. It is lighthearted but meaningful, and the well-fleshed-out characters, especially House, are given a delightful context in which to play out their story. The background details draw us in as much as the plot and characterizations, and I was sorry when it was over.

THE AURORA COUNTY ALL-STARS is a home run in the bottom of the ninth in a tie game with a full count. It really captures all the grandeur and fun that sports literature offers at its best.

    --- Reviewed by Jana Siciliano

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