10/9/2007 - Tuesday evening

At a Hayes Valley cafe

reading The Bat Boy and his Violin, by Gavin Curtis, illustrated by E.B. Lewis. It's about a little boy named Reginald whose dad makes him be the bat boy for the team he coaches in the Negro Baseball League. The team is terrible, but as Reginald begins to play his violin in the dugout--being a bat boy takes time away from his practicing--the players start hitting like pros.

Mostly his mom was reading but, while I sat with them and drank my tea, he read me two very long sentences. He was so great!

The kids in his class get a new book every week and write journal entries like these.

His favorite story, which they've got on DVD and he's watched a million times-- Balto, about the dog who carried a serum to Nome, Alaska to save kids from a diphtheria epidemic in 1925.