Sarah Mulhern of The Reading Zone is definitely a Cybils regular. She is a 6th grade language arts teacher who posts consistently thoughtful and varied reviews of the books she places in her classroom library. She also blogs about writing, teaching, and her classroom…and occasionally monarch butterflies.
As a Round I judge for the Middle Grade Fiction category this year, Sarah recently read and reviewed Cybils nominee The Brooklyn Nine by Alan Gratz. Besides its uniqueness as a baseball title that should appeal equally to boys and girls, it also comprises nine stand-alone yet interweaving stories that cover nine generations of a family, all of which share a love of baseball. As Sarah put it in her review,
The stories are a pleasant mix of history and sport, touching on historical moments like the Civil War, the 1920’s mob, the All-American Girls Baseball League, the Cold War, and more. But regardless of the setting, this is a story about baseball and how it connects a family.
Read the full review here.