Let Them Play (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Let Them Play Elizabeth Bush Raven, Margot Theis Let Them Play; illus. by Chris Ellison. Sleeping Bear, 200532p ISBN 1-58536-260-3$16.95 R Gr. 3-5 At the end of the season in 1955, the South Carolina Little League Champions hailing from the Cannon Street YMCA traveled to Pennsylvania for the playoffs. They were never allowed to take the field, though, instead earning their title by default when none of the other South Carolina teams (all white) would agree to play the single African-American team, preferring instead to withdraw from the association altogether and form their own league. Raven follows the Cannon Street All-Stars through their disappointing season, observing the boys' hopes and enthusiasm and their community's support, while adult decision-makers in the upper echelons of the Little League bent, stretched, and variably enforced rules to ensure that no black team would pose a serious challenge to white competitors. Even as white fans in the Pennsylvania stands shouted for the officials to "let them play!", "the warm-up [End Page 282] practice was the only field-time Little League could offer." Among the many tales of racial discrimination that have found their way into picture books, this particular incident should wallop listeners right where they are likeliest to feel injustice: in their sense of sportsmanship and fair play. Ellison's watercolors, much in the style of E. B. Lewis, are sensitive but unglamorized, recording evenhandedly the indignities of the All-Stars' treatment and the excitement of their road trip to Pennsylvania. An epilogue revisits the All-Stars in 2002, when fourteen team members, now adults, reprised their 1955 trip to the Little League World Series and finally claimed their South Carolina State Championship banner. This bittersweet account of a dream deferred should find its way into most baseball collections. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois