Baseball Books as Mentor Texts: Miracle Mud
This month, I will be featuring baseball books as mentor texts. Using sports-related books is a great way to get reluctant readers and writers interested in the story and the story structure. There are so many wonderful picture book baseball books that I couldn’t fit them all in. But I will be featuring four this month.
Miracle Mud: Lena Blackburne and the Secret Mud that Changed Baseball
Illustrated by Olivier Dominguez
Millbrook, 2013
Baseball regulations state that the shine has to be taken off the balls before they can be used in the major leagues. Lena Blackburne wanted to play baseball, but he wasn’t very good at it. He’d seen how players had tried every technique to make the balls not shiny, but nothing seemed to work. He tried mud from a fishing hole near his house. The mud worked on the balls without ruining them. Now, Lena Blackburne’s famous mud is the only mud used for taking the shine off of baseballs.
Writing Skills
* Sensory Words
* Specificity
