This fast-moving, lighthearted short novel concerns a boy's experiences on a baseball team with his brother, Moondance, and Mop, a girl they know from the Catholic orphanage from which the two boys were recently adopted. From the protagonist's perspective, Myers adeptly shows a newly constituted, loving African-American family in an integrated, urban neighborhood, the intricacies of a youth baseball league and the complex combinations of emotions of several well-characterized children and adults. The author's superior plotting earmarks a memorable story about a boy who doesn't play baseball well but never gives up on himself. (Ages 7-11)

An ALA Notable Children’s Book from the award-winning author of Monster in which “wit, sensitivity, and insight [are combined] to create this funny, fast-paced story about three orphaned children and the Elks, a Little League baseball team” (Publishers Weekly).
 
T.J., his younger brother, Moondance, and Mop—Miss Olivia Parrish—grew up together in the same orphanage. Now T.J. and Moondance have been adopted, and Mop has to find a family before the orphanage closes and “leftover” kids are sent away. Mop hopes that if she can play catcher for the Elks, the Little League baseball team that her friends have joined, the coach will be so impressed that he and his wife will adopt her.

It’s going to take a lot of teamwork for her, T.J, and little Moondance to make their dreams come true!