Kenichi Zenimura was known as the father of Japanese American baseball, first as a player and later a manager. But after Pearl Harbor, Zeni found himself in an internment camp, and the only way he could make the desolate place feel like home was to build a baseball field. Bold Japanese calligraphy brush-and-ink illustrations depict the painstaking work involved--and Zenis joy at playing.

Kenichi Zenimura built a baseball legacy in the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II. Zeni grew up loving everything about the game of baseball and made a career as a successful player and manager in local leagues around California. Small but mighty, he played in exhibition games in Japan with the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. After Pearl Harbor, he and his family were sent, along with thousands of other Japanese Americans, to heavily guarded internment camps to live in barracks behind barbed wire. He was determined to provide a hint of normalcy and pleasure to his people amid the hardships, and what better way than to build a baseball field and organize teams. With hard physical labor and loads of ingenuity, he and his sons and fellow inmates did it all, creating a sense of community along the way. In language that captures the underlying sadness and loss, Moss emphasizes Zeni's fierce spirit as he removes every obstacle in order to play his beloved baseball and regain a sense of pride. Shimizu's Japanese calligraphy brush–and-ink illustrations colored in Photoshop depict the dreary landscape with the ever-present barbed wire, with that beautiful grassy baseball field the only beacon of hope. Much-needed biographical and historical information is provided in an afterword. A worthy companion for Ken Mochizuki and Dom Lee's Baseball Saved Us (1993). (author's note, artist's note, bibliography, index) (Picture book/biography. 7-10)

Gr 3-5 Focusing on her subject's strength of character and love of baseball, Moss introduces readers to Kenichi Zenimura (1900'68). At barely five feet tall, Zeni was hardly a natural athlete; nonetheless, he developed great prowess as a player and coach. Before World War II, he played exhibition games alongside Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, and toured Japan, where he was born. His family moved to Hawaii when he was a child and later to Fresno, California. When war broke out, Zenimura, his wife, and teenage sons were sent to the Gila River internment camp in Arizona. In the barren desert environment, Zeni determined to build a baseball field and rallied others to his cause. Shimizu's artwork, created with Japanese calligraphy brush and ink on paper and Adobe Photoshop, depicts Zeni hoeing and pulling weeds in the hot sun. He made a field with real grass; a fence of castor beans; and, in an ironic twist, bleachers with wood scrounged from the barbed-wire fence posts surrounding the camp. In an afterword, Moss notes that Zenimura won posthumous induction into Japan's Shrine of the Eternals, the equivalent of baseball's Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. Text and illustrations mesh to create an admiring portrait of an exemplary individual who rose above his challenges and inspired others. Pair this picture book with Ken Mochizuki's Baseball Saved Us (Lee &; Low, 1995) for an excellent read-aloud, or use it to introduce Kathryn Fitzmaurice's chapter book A Diamond in the Desert (Viking, 2012). Together these books offer insightful portrayals of the Japanese American internment experience. Marilyn Taniguchi, Beverly Hills Public Library, CA

This story begins in the early 1900s, when tiny Kenichi "Zeni" Zenimura attends a baseball game with his parents and falls in love with the sport. Fast-forward to his adult years, when five-foot Zeni plays, coaches, and manages teams in California's Japanese American leagues. Ordered to report to a Japanese American internment camp in the Arizona desert in 1941, he works with patience, determination, and ingenuity to build a baseball field there, complete with grass, sprinklers, and bleachers. In the closing scene, his home-run ball soars over the barbed wire fence. The informative back matter includes a historical afterword, an author's note, an artist's note, and a source bibliography. One of the many effective illustrations shows Zeni seated on his bunk, gazing at a photo (based on an actual picture) of himself standing between Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. As this expressive picture book makes clear, Zenimura never allowed his small stature to diminish his dreams. A fine historical counterpart to Ken Mochizuki's fictional Baseball Saved Us (1993).

This rich second novel from Kushner (Telex from Cuba) takes place in late--70s New York City and Italy. Reno is a young filmmaker -shopping for experiences,- who, as the novel opens, is attempting to set a land-speed record on her Moto Valera motorcycle in Nevada, only to crash instead. A flashback to New York finds her mixing with a group of artists, among whom she meets Sandro Valera, whose wealthy family manufactures the Moto Valera. Soon they are romantically entwined, and Reno accompanies Sandro on a visit home to Italy. She risks alienating the Valeras by going to their factory to film labor unrest, only to catch Sandro there in flagrante delicto with his cousin Talia. Distraught, she flees with Valera family servant Gianni to Rome, where she discovers Gianni is involved with a volatile protest movement. Snippets from the life of Sandro-s father-s run in intriguing contrast to Reno-s story, presenting his WWI experiences, childhood in Alexandria, Egypt, and the founding of his company. Kushner-s psychological explorations of her characters are incisive, the novel is peppered with subtle -70s details, and it bursts with you-are-there depictions of its time and places. Agent Susan Golomb, Susan Golomb Agency. (Apr.)