[DOWNLOAD] "Winner, Lyle Olsen Graduate Student Essay: "I would have been Happy Just to Catch While the Father Pitched": The Father-son Game of Catch in Young Adult Literature." by Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free

eBook details

Title: Winner, Lyle Olsen Graduate Student Essay: "I would have been Happy Just to Catch While the Father Pitched": The Father-son Game of Catch in Young Adult Literature.
Author : Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature
Release Date : January 22, 2008
Genre: Reference,Books,
Pages : * pages
Size : 430 KB

Description

In Richard Wilbur's short story-turned picture book, "A Game of Catch," seventh-graders Monk and Glennie "slap" the ball "back and forth" (15) in a "slow, mannered, luxurious dance in the sun, their faces perfectly blank and entranced" (11) on the requisite lawn, bright green in Barry Moser's illustrations. This tableau, both in text and image, of the consummate American kid's game is poetically drawn in the opening paragraph: Monk, wearing a catcher's mitt, would lean easily sidewise and back, with one leg lifted and his throwing hand almost down to the grass, and then lob the white ball straight up into the sunlight. Glennie would shield his eyes with his left hand and, just as the ball fell past him, snag it with a little dart of his glove. Then he would burn the ball straight toward Monk and it would spank into the round mitt and sit, like a still-life apple on a plate, until Monk flipped it over into his right hand and, with a negligent flick of his hanging arm, gave Glennie a fast grounder (10). The facing page artwork replicates this familiar scene, until we turn the page: when Scho, who's forgotten his glove, arrives and asks to participate, Glennie and Monk reluctantly include him, but only for a short time. Soon, the first two boys, who must "[toss] easy grounders to Scho" (11), instead of their preference of "burning them in" to each other (11), begin excluding him, and their play returns to normal: "They threw lazily fast or lazily slow--high, low, or wide--and always handsomely, their expressions serene, changeless, and forgetful" (15).