Desperado Who Stole Baseball [Paperback]

Baseball novelist John H. Ritter grew up playing "one-on-one" hardball with his brothers in the dry, dusty hill country of eastern San Diego County, near the Mexican border. "That sparse and wild landscape seeps into all of my work," says John, "whether the story's set in the woods of Ohio or the streets of New York. You'll find references to it in phrases such as, 'I followed a deer trace through the thicket to see what all the caterwauling was about (CHOOSING UP SIDES).' Or, 'Of course, there were some big differences Aliving in New York?. Like having this hard sidewalk under my shoes all the time, instead of a powdery, dirt path (OVER THE WALL).'" John's decision to write the IRA Award winning novel, CHOOSING UP SIDES, came directly from his boyhood memories of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the great Civil Rights movement. "I wanted to explore the root causes of prejudice and how those biases are introduced and sustained by a culture's belief system. The baseball setting of the story-with baseball's high esteem for left-handers-contrasted nicely with Luke's reality and helped me to develop a great metaphor for that exploration." John's new novel, OVER THE WALL, "is a response to the devastation our country's leaders put us and the world through during the Vietnam War, the effects of which are still being felt by many, like a festering wound. But it's a healing book, exploring through one boy's eyes exactly what it takes to affect a healing." John attended the University of California at San Diego. He was a custom painting contractor for 25 years. "Even so," he says, "I always 'booked' my calendar with time to write." And in 1994 the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators honored him with the Judy Blume Award for a novel in progress. Three years later, upon the sale of CHOOSING UP SIDES to Philomel Books, he retired from house painting and realized his dream of becoming a full-time writer. John is currently Writer in Residence for the Oceanside (CA) Unified School District where his wife, Cheryl, is an elementary school teacher. They are the parents of one grown daughter, Jolie. copyright 2000 by Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. All rights reserved.