Linda Sue Park,
Keeping Score
Clarion Books 2008.

Ages 9-13

Newbery Medalist Linda Sue Park (A Single Shard, Archer's Quest) has come up with another winner with Keeping Score, which is set in 1950s New York. Nine-year-old Maggie Fortini is named officially after her Irish great-grandmother but, unofficially, she’s Maggie-o, after Joe di Maggio, her fire-service Dad’s favorite baseball player.  Indeed, like everyone else's around her, Maggie’s life revolves around baseball.

When Jim, a new fireman colleague of her Dad’s, teaches Maggie the art of score-keeping, she throws herself into it with a passion. Even readers who didn’t think they were interested in baseball cannot help but be caught up in the excitement of the game; Park builds up the tensions, agony and jubilation with an enthusiasm that is contagious.

Having a fireman father and hanging out at the firehouse mean that Maggie has grown up with a certain understanding of how precious life is: but war in another country is beyond her scope of reality – until, that is, Jim is drafted into the army to serve in the Korean War.  Maggie promises to write and naturally enough, baseball is the main topic of their correspondence. Jim also sends Maggie a photograph of his tent boy, Jae-hyung, a Korean boy a bit older than her. Maggie is delighted to have this contact with a boy on the other side of the world and starts to send him little gifts: but she becomes more and more concerned as her letters and parcels to Jim remain unanswered.

While waiting for news, Maggie sets out to discover what has been going on in Korea and, in parallel with her scoring notebooks, she starts to track the lines of battle from the start of the conflict.  She is disconcerted to realise that they have moved very little in the previous two years... Park is very deft at making readers think about the effects of war, including on those far away from the battle field. Once Maggie discovers the truth about Jim, she resolves to help him: and baseball, perhaps not surprisingly, is her vehicle for that.

Maggie is a very special character, whose tenacity is the driving force in the book.  Park’s dialogue is always spot-on and her writing sparkles with vitality. Her gift for story-telling means that readers may well be surprised by how much they have learnt along the way about both baseball and the Korean War.  Park provides a list of useful websites for any budding scorers inspired by Maggie; and there is a lively account of her own scoring experiences as a child, as well as a sobering pause-for-thought as regards the status of the Korean War today.

This is a book to make you both laugh and cry. And that's no mean feat.

Marjorie Coughlan
May 2008