Coretta Scott King Award Book

Title: We Are The Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball

Author and Illustrator: Kadir Nelson

Age Level: Grade 3 and Up

-This book is appropriate for grade 3 and up because it is a illustrated chapter book that is more appropriate for a student in the third grade or above. It is very text based with chapters that are multiple pages long. A student any younger than third grade would most likely not have the patience to sit through a book that long nor would they be able to comprehend all of the written text in it.

Summary: This historically accurate book recalls the Negro Baseball Leagues and all of the original players. Through this book, the reader is able to really understand the social and political struggles back then that most of us really have no true understanding of. The book chronicles around the baseball players that never were quite as popular or well know as the greats Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. This book is set up into nine chapters that begin with the start of the first Negro League in 1920 and wrap-up with the break through of Jackie Robinson as the first African American to break into the white major league baseball circuit. Throughout the remaining parts of the book, the reader learns about the important and fascinating events that took place during this time as well as the men who made these events now important and valuable pieces of America's history. With the use of extremely detailed and eye catching illustrations, the reader begins to understand the events that took place close to 100 years ago and how these events have shaped how America and the world is today.  

Classroom Strategies: This historical chapter book would be a great asset to a history lesson because it provides concrete, factual information on the men of the first negro baseball teams and the events and obstacles they faced. Since the book is broken down into chapters following the negro baseball players progress in baseball, the upper level elementary grades could work at compiling a time line to represent the main points of this time as well as to help them understand and retain all of the information they read in the book. This story could also be read chapter by chapter and the class can fill out a Compare/Contrast chart once the entire book has been read to compare the ways back in the 1920's to how things are done today. If desired, this could also be done individually and then the class can discuss their answers and compile it into one class Compare/Contrast poster.

ESOL Strategies: Since this book is a pretty large chapter book with very vocabulary based pages, the text may not be appropriate for students at the lower grades, especially ESOL students. To help ESOL students comprehend and read the book, the outline would also be very beneficial for ESOL students and allow them to keep track of what is occurring in the story. The amazing illustrations also help the students to be able to visualize what is occurring and hopefully help them more fully understand what the story is about.

Read Aloud: For this book, I would make sure to read aloud the first and last chapters of the book. These two chapters really depict two of the most important times during this whole sequence of events. The first chapter introduces and explains when the first negro baseball teams were developed and the hurdles and successes these individuals witnessed during that time. The other chapter that I would read aloud is the last chapter as this was once again another turning point in history for the African American race as they broke through the walls of segregation and began playing on the white baseball teams. Both of these chapters are crucial parts of this great story and both help explain the events that occurred. 

Personal Opinion: I thought it was pretty interesting to learn about the first negro baseball teams to come into existence back in the 20's. I have always enjoyed baseball so reading about a time when the look of baseball was drastically changed was something very interesting and eye-opening to learn about. I liked the set-up of the chapter book with the nine different chapters following the progress of the African Americans in baseball, as well as the beautifully illustrated pictures that helped tell this great story.