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Leon (now known by his nickname, Thumb) and his best friend Susan love their tiny, remote fishing village wedged between the sea and the mountains. It is beautiful, peaceful — and very boring. So Thumb and Susan come up with an ingenious plan to form a baseball team, win the regional title, and qualify to be sent to the championships in Vancouver courtesy of the school board. Never mind that none of the village's children have ever played baseball before. Never mind that there are no other teams to compete with. Never mind that the village is not even wide enough for a baseball diamond. With a lot of ingenuity and a little grown-up help, the New Auckland Beavers go into training and start packing their bags. But what will happen when they get to Vancouver? Ken Roberts’s witty portrait of the droll, gently subversive villagers of New Auckland makes this book a welcome sequel to its acclaimed predecessor.
Gr 4-7-An unlikely baseball story begins to unfold when Mr. G. H. Entwhistle's rowboat makes it into a remote fishing village on the coast of British Columbia. A group of kids including the narrator, a boy best known as Thumb, take the Englishman to their town, population 138. It is then that the nine children come up with a plan for a school-sponsored visit to a big city. And Mr. Entwhistle, author and illustrator of the "Bobby and Bernice Beaver" books, assumes a role as unique as his outfit on the foggy day his boat came to the village. The kids realize that they have enough players for a baseball team. Although they've never played the game, they make creative decisions and preparations for the provincial championship in Vancouver, supported by Thumb's father, the schoolmaster. The trip has surprising results while allowing the players to experience a big city, so different from their hometown, which has 42 buildings and no roads. Thumb's voice is wise, allowing humor to arise from his observations of others and their responses to sights and events. The setting is both familiar and exotic; the children are geographically isolated but research baseball and more via the Internet. The characters are appealing and the plot unfolds naturally to create a satisfying and plausible story. Thumb, as an adult, no longer lives in New Auckland but returns with his children to view the trophy and carry on an old family baseball tradition.-Maria B. Salvadore, formerly at Washington DC Public Library Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Denise Higgins
reviewed Thumb on a Diamond on April 27, 2018
Thumb on a Diamond
I really liked this book. It wasn't without flaws, but I definitely recommend! Giving this middle grade a solid 4 stars!
The Lost Children starts off a bit slow. It's about a girl named Josephine who lives in a town where everyone has to wear gloves. Her father owns a glove factory and MAKES everyone in the town wear gloves too. People hate him and the kids hate Josephine because of the gloves. Now this beginning sounds super dopey, but it comes back around eventually.
One day Josephine is in her backyard planting a tomato for a class project when she sees a small boy standing in her backyard. He looked dirty and lost and had no shoes! Josephine felt bad for the boy and decided to invite him inside her house for some food. This is the beginning of a weird friendship. The boy comes again the next day and this time Josephine invites him up to her room. He seemed so tired. She hears her father come home and rushes downstairs to meet him. When she gets back to her room the boy is gone. She asked him where he had come from earlier in the day and he pointed toward the shed. She heads toward the shed. While inside the shed looking for the boy, she trips and finds her self somewhere else. Definitely not her shed. She is confused and frightened. It turns out when she tripped she fell into a different world. The boy is from this world. His name is Fargus and he is an orphan.
I read this book to my boys, a chapter a night. It was slow going. Each chapter is around 3 to 4 pages. I should have read a few chapters a night, but we were reading 3 different books ;) I think because we read the book so slowly that the beginning seemed to take forever to get to some action. This isn't a swashbuckling action packed story. It's a slow burn adventure with three kids as the main characters, all on a journey. It's like a mix of Wizard of Oz and Narnia. Each kid needs something and like Dorothy, all Josephine wants is to find her way home. What she finds on her journey is so much more. She found out that she was strong, brave, tough and fearless. She found true friends.
There is a twist at the end that definitely caught me off guard and of course like a sap I got choked up and teary eyed. My 13 year old really enjoyed this one and wanted to continue talking to me about it. His critique is that some of the plot points were a little too convenient and didn't make any sense. He wished the book was either longer or had a sequel so that some of the "magic" could have been fleshed out more. I love it. Teaching the boy right :D
If you like middle grade or your kids do, I'd definitely pick this one up.
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