Stealing Home

By Ellen Schwartz

It is 1947 and Yankee fever grips the Bronx. Nine-year-old Joey Sexton joins the neighborhood kids who flock to the park to team up and play. However, Joey is of mixed race and his skin is lighter than the other kids’. He is seldom picked.

When Joey’s mother dies, he is sent to live with his mother’s estranged family. Joey is whisked away to Brooklyn. Though it’s just across town, it might as well be a different world. His grandfather, his aunt Frieda, and his ten-year-old cousin Roberta are not only white, they are Jewish. Joey knows nothing about Brooklyn or Judaism. The only thing that’s constant is the baseball madness that grips the community. Only this time, the heroes aren’t Joey’s beloved Yankees. They are the Brooklyn Dodgers, especially Jackie Robinson, a man whose struggle to integrate baseball helped set the stage for black America’s struggle for acceptance and civil rights.

Joey’s story takes readers to a time when America’s favorite pastime became a battleground for human rights.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 8, 2009
• ISBN: 9781770490413

Ellen Schwartz

Ellen Schwartz is the author of eighteen award-winning books for children, as well as one non-fiction book for adults, a collection of profiles of women singer-songwriters. In addition to writing books, Ellen works as a corporate writer and editor and as a freelance magazine writer who has published hundreds of magazine articles. Ellen has taught creative writing classes for many years at the college and university levels. Her passions include reading, jazz dancing, baking, and hiking. After a decade of being hippie homesteaders in the Kootenay region of British Columbia, Ellen and her husband now live in Burnaby, BC.

Reviews for Stealing Home

[sonya.contreras · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book incorporated dealing with prejudices, forgiveness, healing, family dynamics and learning. Although in the children's section and my boys enjoyed the baseball, the action, and the interaction of the kids standing up against a bully, I enjoyed it as well.

Schwartz developed a family hurt by past mistakes and protected themselves by hiding and control. A second chance was offered, to make things right and the reader takes a roller-coaster ride wondering if all would be well and if anything can touch the grandfather's heart of stone.

Worthwhile read. Realistic look at life during Jackie Robinson's Rookie of the year.