The Prince of Fenway Park
4/5
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About this ebook
It's been eighty-six years since the Red Sox won a World Series. Eighty-six years cursed.
Twelve-year-old Oscar Egg be-lieves he is cursed, just like the Red Sox. His real parents didn't want him, and now his adopted mom has dumped him off to live with his strange, sickly dad.
But there's something Oscar doesn't know. The Boston Red Sox really are cursed, and not just because they sold Babe Ruth in 1919. Someone deliberately jinxed the team, and the secret to breaking the Curse lies deep below Fenway Park, with Oscar's dad and the Cursed Creatures, a group that has been doomed to live out their miserable lives below Fenway until the Curse is broken.
Oscar knows he can be the one to break the Curse, allowing the Red Sox to finally win the World Series and setting the Cursed Creatures free. But some of the creatures are angry. Some don't want the Curse broken. Some want Oscar, and the Red Sox, to fail and remain cursed forever.
Julianna Baggott
Julianna Baggott's work has appeared in such publications as The Southern Review, Ms. magazine, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2000, and read on NPR's Talk of the Nation. The nationally bestselling author of The Miss America Family and Girl Talk, as well a book of poems entitled This Country of Mothers, she teaches at Florida State University and lives in Tallahassee with her husband and three children. Visit her website at www.juliannabaggott.com.
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Reviews for The Prince of Fenway Park
4 ratings4 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5In 2004, the Boston Red Sox finally broke the 86-year “curse” that prevented them from winning a World Series. The curse was said to have originated after the Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in the off-season of 1919-1920. Prior to the sale of “the Bambino,” the Sox had won five World Series titles. After the sale, the Yankees soared as high as the Sox sunk low. Oscar, an adopted, mixed-race boy living in Boston in 2004, was bullied and misunderstood at school, abandoned by his real parents, and thought his white adoptive parents, who were divorced, didn’t really want him. So he could relate to the Red Sox, because they both suffered under a curse. The day before his twelfth birthday, his mother said she had to leave town, and dropped him off to live with his strange, reclusive dad without her ex-husband’s permission. Oscar’s dad reluctantly took Oscar to the home his son had never seen. It was then he first discovered that his dad was part of an enchanted Celtic fairy world underneath Fenway Park. In fact, there was a whole community of beings under the park, who lived there because of an actual curse. It became Oscar’s mission to save his new family; the Red Sox; and in the process, himself. When I started this book, I loved the sensitivity and honesty of the characters. I was ever so briefly appalled when I thought the author had jumped the Harry Potter shark. But the Celtic fairyland she creates is culturally relevant to Boston, and its adaptation to Fenway Park is admirably clever. And somehow, it doesn’t really interfere at all with the story about the Red Sox and baseball. Additionally, in her inclusion of some of the history of baseball (cleverly woven into the plot rather than presented didacticly), the author forthrightly and disarmingly confronts the history of racism in baseball in a way that brings out “the audacity of hope” among the great black and Hispanic players through history. And you do get baseball history in this book. There is no doubt that young readers who are baseball fans will love this book. But it is not just for sports fans. You would have to be quite unflappable not to get caught up in the excitement both of Oscar’s quest to end the curse, and of the game he assembles out of a historical group of baseball players to make it happen. You not only can almost hear Oscar break out singing “You Gotta Have Heart” to his baseball team, but you want to join in as well!The book also peaks your interest in all sorts of subjects: what are these creatures from Irish mythology? Who were all these baseball players referred to by Oscar and what role did they play in the game’s history? How did Jackie Robinson break the curse of racism in the game? This is a charming and informative book. I know from Baggott's website that one of the author's interests is that boys are falling behind girls in literacy, and so she wanted to write a book that boys would want to read. But everyone will want to read this, including the parents!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A book intended for ten to fifteen year old readers brings to life the underworld of the Curse of the Bambino; fairies, two headed annoncers, the smoker, weasel man and the pooka among others. They are the fans if you will of the curse. They have always only known it existed so they come to trust in it. Enter 12 year old Oscar, a mixed race boy who is dropped off on his secretive Dad, without notice to Dad or even Oscar. Oscar learns who his Dad really is, the part he plays in the curse and that he too lives in Fwnway Park. Full of many true to life details, including the Red Sox' notoriously anti integration stance, that bordered on outright racism. The 'N' word is even used several times but within believable historical context. History isn't always sanitized and pretty. Oscar takes a ride with the mysterious pooka and finds out what he needs to do to break the curse. Get the magic baseball that has been stitched together with red string by Babe Ruth himself! Oscar learns to be proud of his heratige, his family especially his Dad, and his place in the history of the curse and it's demise.Throw in a winner take all game of the good vs evil teams of Red Sox past and present, but as twelve year olds! It takes place in Fenway Park during the Red Sox ployoff series win over arch rival New York Yankees, in which the Sox overcame a 0-3 games deficit and went on to win their first World Sweeries in 86 years, or since 1918.Part fact, part fiction, liberally dosed with fantasy to help keep young readers glued to a sometimes difficult history of the Boston Red Sox.Reccomended for Red Sox fans of all ages, and baseball fans in general, it will prompt honest discussion of some of the more negative history of the Red Sox, while celebrating the end of the Curse of the Bambino.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Excellent!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Julianna Baggott throws a curve-ball at the readers in The Prince of Fenway Park. This book is full of historical fiction and surprisingly full of fantasy. When a reader picks up this book, he/she will think "just another" baseball book, but what lies inside is very different from a normal baseball book. Julianna tries her own her theory on how the curse of Fenway Park really happened. In her book she talks about how there is a whole different world of people who worked at Fenway Park and how they were cursed when Babe Ruth left the Red Sox. Oscar is a Red Sox fan who doesn't know it at first but he will save Fenway Park. His father is one of the cursed people who lives under Fenway Park. He brings Oscar to meet all of the cursed people and to unknowingly, break the curse. This stroy includes a climax with many good people who want to help Oscar break the curse. Since there is good guys, there is one antagonist who wants Oscar to fail. In the end good is superior to bad. This book isn't for !2 and up. It may be too "kiddish" for 12 and up readers. Im not saying the book is bad. But young readers will have more of an adventure traveling deep underground, underneath Fenway Park. Meeting mysterious creatures and famous baseball heros as they were young. So overall, The Prince of Fenway Park is good, but more for young readers who like, baseball, history, and fantasy.