April Meeting Wrap-Up

The Book Buddies Book Club met yesterday afternoon to discuss Free Baseball by Sue Corbett. We had a great discussion followed by a phone call with the author!

We began by talking about Felix and his relationship with his mother and why he was so angry with her. We thought about why he ran away at the baseball game and whether or not that was the right thing to do. We were a little split - some members thought that occasionally there might be enough of a reason to run away despite the dangers.

We discussed Felix's relationship with Vic and why they got along so well. They spent a lot of time together and shared a love of baseball. But they also had a lot in common - they both lost people they loved - Felix lost his dad and Vic lost his wife to illness.

We had a great time talking about Homer and what an amazing dog he was and all the unbelievable things he was capable of doing.

We spent time discussing the moment when Felix realized he was never going to see his father and what a turning point that was for him. One of our club members did a great job reading the passage aloud (page 91) so that we could all experience it again and talk about his feelings.

We talked about what happened to Felix as a baby, how he and his mother escaped from Cuba. I read the author's note aloud about Cuban refugees and we thought about what a difficult situation that is and how scary it must be for immigrants.

Overall we really enjoyed the book and look forward to reading more from Sue Corbett. In fact, club members got into a friendly squabble about who would be checking out Ms. Corbett's newest book, The Last Newspaper Boy in America.

Following our discussion we had a delightful telephone call with the author, Sue Corbett. She was eager to answer our questions and gave us very thoughtful answers. We asked her about where she got the idea for Free Baseball (a visit to a ballpark where she lost track of her son) and if she's working on anything new right now (yes, a novel in progress). She loves baseball and has been a lifelong fan of the NY Mets. She doesn't have a golden retriever like Homer (who was based on a real dog named Jericho, who was the mascot for a minor league team, the Miracle) but she does have a beagle named Louie.

She told us about why she chose to include such a disagreeable character as Maryann in the story and how it's important for her characters to overcome obstacles. Maryann being as unlikeable and nasty as she was made Felix a much stronger person.

She is trained as a journalist and has no answer for what she would be doing if she wasn't a writer. As a child she wanted to be a gymnast or a figure skater. She loves her job and fondly remembers her local children's librarian when she was growing up. She's an avid reader and believes that she could never have become a writer if she wasn't a reader first.

One of her favorite books growing up was The Boxcar Children because they were like her family (4 kids) but they were living on their own (!) which was thrilling to read about as a child.

She talked with us a little bit about The Last Newspaper Boy in America which she said is a valentine to newspapers. She was a newspaper girl as a young person and she wanted to preserve that experience since there really aren't any newspaper boys and girls now. Also because she's a journalist she has great affection for newspapers and wanted them to be remembered by the tech savvy youth of today who are primarily getting their news from the Internet and other sources.

Ms. Corbett was absolutely delightful and we were thrilled to have the opportunity to speak with her. A BIG thank you to her for her time and willingness to participate in our book club. Another great author experience!!

Read on for Cynthia Leitich Smith's interview with Ms. Corbett and get the whole story on how she came up with the idea for Free Baseball.