Extra innings Book

I think that Robert Newton Peck wrote Extra Innings for two main purposes. One of the reasons came off pretty clearly. This reason is that one should not give up on their dreams. The main character of the book is Tate Stonemason, and at a young age, Tate loses his family in a plane crash. In this plane crash, he also seriously injures his leg which makes his dream of playing professional baseball unrealistic. Therefore, he lives with his great-aunt named Vidalia; she tells Tate all about her experiences. Lastly, I think Peck is secretly teaching us a little bit about the Great Depression which is when Vidalia lived.
The theme of Extra Innings comes off very clearly, and that theme is never give up or to keep on dreaming. Even with the tragic event in Tate’s childhood, he never stops dreaming and is still a happy person. Even though Tate knows that a future in baseball is very unlikely, he still loves the game. Along with his natural love for the sport, Aunt Vidalia tells Tate all of her baseball stories. All of her stories revolved around her time with the Ethiopian Clowns, a team that played during the Great Depression. She told these stories so that Tate would have a better understanding of this time.
This book is written as a narration. At certain times in this book, it was almost like a narration inside of a narration because of the stories that Aunt Vidalia told. Robert Newton Peck wrote this book very interestingly. He wrote it from three points of view: Tate’s, Aunt Vidalia’s, and the general public’s views. Surprisingly, very little of the book is written from Tate’s point of view. The way that the author writes also helps the reader better understand the Great Depression.
Overall, I thought this book was pretty good. I thought this book would contain a lot more baseball and not nearly as much Great Depression. I did not really like how the author kept changing the point of view for the reader. It made the book much more complicated while not adding much more quality to the book. The only books that I have read that could barely relate to this book are all baseball books, almost all of them being written by Mike Lupica. In conclusion, I think this book is an easy, quick, yet good read.