ALA Booklist (Sun Feb 01 00:00:00 CST 2004)

Johnson pays tribute to Negro Leagues legend Josh Gibson in this poetic picture book about a girl who longs to play ball. The narrator is a young girl, who tells her grandmother's story. Grandmama's father, a die-hard Gibson fan, teaches his daughter to play baseball, even though there were no teams for girls in the 1940s. When her cousin Danny is injured in a game, Grandmama fills in. Wearing her "pink dress with a white bow," she bats and catches "just like Josh Gibson," earning cheers that she still cherishes. Johnson tempers what could have been a sentimental tale with Grandmama's contagious enthusiasm and sense of empowerment, and her text has a baseball announcer's suspenseful rhythm: "the balls sailed away, sailed away, gone." Peck's angular pastels, while occasionally awkward in the details, skillfully capture the nostalgic sports action and celebration as well as the pride the girl feels in Grandmama's accomplishments. A closing note offers a brief, nicely documented biography of Gibson.

Horn Book (Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 CDT 2004)

When Grandmama was young, she could hit, run, and catch just like her idol, Negro League baseball player Josh Gibson, but she wasn't allowed to play on the boys' team. With thoughtful, understated text, Johnson captures a little girl's eventual triumph while inviting readers to consider the cost of exclusion based on race or gender. The atmospheric pastel illustrations bring the 1940s to life.

Kirkus Reviews

Peck's strong, evocative pastels with their vintage look are just right for Johnson's home run of a story. A girl tells of her Grandmama's birth and how her dad said his new baby would play just like the great Negro League catcher Josh Gibson. And so she did, practicing her hitting even though girls didn't play baseball in the '50s—except for one Fourth of July, when her cousin Danny's injury leaves an opening on his team. Grandmama hit the ball, caught the ball, and stole home—"just like Josh Gibson." The action takes place in memory, while the girl and her grandmother sit at a kitchen table with a photograph, bat, glove, and ball. An end note offers a brief bio of Gibson and makes reference to two female players who also have splendid picture books about them: Alta Weiss, who played pro ball in Deborah Hopkinson's Girl Wonder: A Baseball Story in Nine Innings (p. 232) and Jackie Mitchell, who struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig back-to-back in Marissa Moss's upcoming Mighty Jackie, the Strike-out Queen . Johnson never disappoints; in this one memory, family stories and baseball braid together a sweetly powerful and slyly subversive tale. (Picture book. 6-9)

School Library Journal (Mon Mar 01 00:00:00 CST 2004)

K-Gr 3 A young narrator opens this story about her grandmother with an anecdote about the legendary Josh Gibson, a Negro League player who once hit a baseball so hard in Pittsburgh that it landed during his game in Philadelphia the next day. That was the day Grandmama was born. Her father brought a Louisville slugger to the hospital and vowed that his daughter would "make baseballs fly, just like Josh Gibson." She became as good a player as the boys on the Maple Grove All-Stars, and sometimes she was invited to practice with them. When her cousin hurt his arm during a game, Grandmama got her chance to hear the cheers as she ran the bases, "stealing home." Peck's well-designed, richly colored pastel artwork, which shows people with emotion and depth, is clearly the highlight of the book. Young Grandmama, in yellow pedal pushers or a pink dress, stands out among the boys' white uniforms and the burnt orange chest protectors of the catcher and umpire. A close-up at the end shows the narrator holding the very ball her grandmother hit, as the older woman looks on, her hand on a photo of the team. Information about Hall of Famer Gibson is appended. Although the story is slight, it imparts the message that a girl can succeed at a "boy's game" if she sets her mind to it. Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH