A Long Pitch Home

Bilal has to leave Pakistan quickly without telling any of his friends. What makes it worse is that it is his birthday and the family is leaving without Baba. Will he make friends in the United States? Do they play cricket there? When will Baba join them? Why can't he come with them? There are so many questions that Bilal has about leaving Pakistan that he is nervous and scared. When they arrive in Washington they are met by his aunt and uncle. Living with his relatives, he is able to learn some things from is cousin Jalal.

Even though Jalal is much older than Bilal, he takes him under his wing. He teaches him about baseball and takes him to baseball camp. Bilal meets some boys there and one girl, Jordan. The boys do not want Jordan on the team because she is a girl, but Bilal feels a special kinship with her. School is another problem for Bilal. He has difficulty with English and again, does not make many friends. The boys he knows from baseball camp are in another class but Jordan is in his class. He develops a reluctant friendship with her and learns that her father is deployed in Afghanistan and she is living with her uncle. He continues to play baseball and Jordan helps him with his pitching and hitting on the sly. He does not want the boys to know they are friends. When his father still does not come to America after almost a year, Bilal is getting worried. He will do whatever he can to get his Baba to come and live with them. He takes a chance at the biggest baseball game of the year, but will it pay off.

This is a great story about coming to America as an immigrant family. It deals with separation from loved ones, dealing with a new language and culture, trying to make friends and fit it as well as making decisions to be true to yourself. I enjoyed this book and recommend it to schools, class libraries, community libraries and to middle grade students.

A Long Pitch Home is about Bilal, a boy who was perfectly fine living in Pakistan and playing cricket. But then after his father had disappeared for several days, he comes home and tells the family that they will be moving to America with Bilal's Aunt and Uncle and he will be joining them eventually. Bilal hangs out with his cousin Jalaal who helps him learn English and teaches him about baseball. Bilal wants nothing to do with baseball, he wants to play cricket!

This is a relatively long book directed at children, but I think that it is a great story. It covers a year in the life of Bilal and all the adjustments he has to make coming to America, fitting in with the other kids, learning a new language and a new sport.

I received a free e-copy of this book in order to write this review, I was not otherwise compensated.

A Long Pitch Home

Natalie Dias Lorenzi knows how to write a first line that pulls a reader into a book. A Long Pitch Home begins, “They took my father three days ago, a week before my tenth birthday.” The statement forms the impetus and background for her story of Balil who gets a visa to come to the United States with his immediate family, except for his father.

Adjustments begin as they leave the airport with his uncle sitting behind the steering wheel on the left side of the car and his mother “sitting next to him, where the steering wheel should be.” His observation of other things that are different include a wide road with four neat lanes but no donkeys pulling carts, no buses with fringe hanging from the bumpers, and no people riding on the tops or hanging out the doors and windows.
The book is laced with pertinent humor. “I smell masala and am glad we are eating something normal. I have heard Americans eat hot dogs, but I do not want to try those. We don’t eat dog meat in Pakistan.” Bilal describes his arrival at the gym, “Anyone can see I’m different from the other kids at baseball camp. I’m the only one with a black eye.”

Bilal’s copes with being separated from his father by Skyping with him occasionally and remaining hopeful that he will be granted a visa soon. He learns a new brand of English that is different from what he learned in Pakistan and focuses on learning to play baseball instead of cricket. His friendship with his rival for the pitching job causes problems with the other players.Jordan is an outcast because she is a girl and team members discourage him from having anything to do with her, but they share more than baseball. She is missing her father who has been deployed to Afghanistan.

The author’s background as a librarian in a school with a majority population of immigrants and years of teaching English as a Second Language in Japan, Italy, and the US bring empathy for this young Muslim Pakistani immigrant who adapts to life in a new country while holding onto traditions that are important to his family and culture. One of my favorite scenes was his attempt to eat customary American foods for Thanksgiving dinner and seeing those traditions through the eyes of someone who is eating them for the first time.

A Long Pitch Home, available on September 6, is an excellent choice for middle schoolers who look for diversity in the characters in their books or for anyone who loves a really good story. If you like both of those and are not in middle school, go ahead and read it. You have my permission.

I really enjoyed the narration in this book. Bilal's voice really shines. His confidence in Pakistan, his uncertainty and depression during his early weeks in Virginia, is sense of loss and feeling out of place, all of this comes through in his dialogue and narration. More than most characters we can understand why he makes poor choices regarding Jordan. At first he genuinely doesn't understand what is going on. Later, he doesn't want to lose his small group of tenuous (and admittedly fairweather) friends.
All in all, this is a quick and compelling read. It highlights sports, politics, and the need for interpersonal understanding and patience. A solid choice for nearly any middle grade reader.

Loved it. I love the reading and baseball, so this story was a perfect fit. I shared the book with my son and he fell in love with book and wanted me to find more by this author and in this genre. The story draws you in and it allows you to see into the eyes of children who are immigrants to this country and the struggles that they deal with. Perfect book for the middle grade boy who want to read about sports and will show them how similiar all children, even those not like them, to themselves.