Hardball
Press Children’s
Division Offers Bi-Lingual Titles on Equality, Strength, Sharing
Book review by John Pietaro
Hats Off for
Gabbie / Aplauso para Gaby!
Written by Marivir R. Montebon,
Illustrationj by Yana Murashko, Translation y Laura Flores
(Hardball
Press, 2016)
The Cabbage
That Came Back / El Repollo Que Volvio
Written by Stephen Pearl, Illustration
by Rafael Pearl, Translation by Sara Pearl
(Hardball
Press, 2016)
With the addition of these two releases, the
children’s division of independent, progressive publisher Hardball Press is
running eight-strong. The series is unified by engaging, moving tales of
growth, self-realization and visions of social justice with a strong focus on
multi-culturalism: each title is published in both English and Spanish. But the
publisher is sure to avoid the preachiness that can be associated with such a
mission. Instead the text is clearly driven by the experiences and expanse of
the child’s world and Hardball’s artwork is inviting and often compelling.
With Hats Off
for Gabbie! / Aplauso para Gaby! Hardball
brings us the ongoing fight for identity and equality via the tale of an eight
year-old girl wishing to become a member of the local Little League baseball
team. She is confronted with open sexism when the dismissive team coach tells
her, “This is for boys only”. Confronted with exclusion, Gabbie and her friend
divisive a plan to have her try out for the team, in essence, in drag.
Disguised as a boy, her athletic talents immediately earn her a place on the
team, and when in a tight game her batting skills are put to the test, she
scores the winning home run. And then in coming forward with the reality of her
gender, Gabbie liberates the team for girl athletes.
The core story is an important one for girls who have
so often been left out of team sports, but there is room for this to be
symbolic of one’s journey for self-actualization: following both her victorious
moment and acceptance by the coach, “Gabbie made a promise to herself to always
tell the truth”. This is an empowering statement in any context.
The
Cabbage That Came Back / El Repollo Que Volvio offers another important moral, selflessness.
Here, in the face of a winter colder and more snow-filled than she’d known
before, a rabbit is desperately seeking to find vegetation to eat. Discovering
two heads of cabbage in the frozen landscape, she brings them home and feasts
on the first. Considering a neighbor she believes to be hungry, she gives the
second cabbage to the hedgehog. Multiple times, the cabbage is given away to
the next animal bearing winter’s famine, but when each realizes that she has
enough food, they give it to another. Eventually it returns to the rabbit, an
apparent reward for her kindness to others in need. The symbolism of outreach
and sharing is center-stage and brings the concept to children in an inviting
and gentle manner: the rabbit could not
rest having two if she believed others didn’t have any. With our recent
election and its coming fallout, this timely morality story may become a necessary
tool in a field of disconnect, isolation and divisiveness.
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