Children's Book Review: We Are the Ship

We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson (Hyperion/Jump at the Sun, $18.99, 9780786808328/0786808322, 96 pp., ages 8-up, January 2008)

After Nelson's stunning images of such historic figures as Harriet Tubman (in Moses) and W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and Duke Ellington (in Ellington Is Not a Street), he pays tribute here to the legendary players and history of the Negro League. In his authorial debut, Nelson adopts the narrative voice of a fellow ballplayer, and the portraits, too, possess the candor of a moment observed by a teammate on the field. The cover image of Josh Gibson not only conveys the home run giant's confidence and physical strength, but also an unguarded quality, a glimpse of the man behind the talent. In a later scene, we watch Gibson from behind, as he observes Satchel Paige, who is about to release a pitch to Gibson's teammate Buck Leonard; the tension in Gibson's arms, his stance and the ripples in his neck--every fiber of him absorbs the information to be gleaned for his own imminent at-bat.

The book's title comes from a quotation by Rube Wilson, who had the vision and fortitude to form the Negro League in February 1920 ("We are the ship, all else the sea"). Nelson credits Wilson with the invention of the "bunt-and-run" strategy, calling pitches from the dugout and running his team "like it was a big league ball club." The text takes on the conversational, easy feel of a grandfather sharing tales of his game-playing days with a grandchild recently turned on to baseball. And the history of the Negro League era comes to life most vividly through the stories of its individuals: Satchel Paige and his speeding tickets as much as his pitching prowess, Gus Greenlee running numbers as well as he ran the Pittsburgh Crawfords. Nelson suggests how the league changed baseball overall, with base-stealing, night games and batting helmets and catchers' protective gear because of their "rough" form of play. He discusses how players often had to eat groceries and sleep on their team busses because there were so few places where they would be served or put up for the night. But the author also chronicles how well leaders like Rube Wilson prepared the players for the day baseball would become an integrated sport, led by Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Nelson focuses on the triumphs more than the setbacks of this era and, with his glorious paintings of baseball greats and grand ball parks (many no longer standing), makes readers feel as if they are along on a history-making journey.--Jennifer M. Brown