Good Morning! Here’s the Monday Morning Blog!
Did you get a chance to touch base with that teen or young adult in your life last week? Be sure to check in with them. Take an interest in what they are doing. Do they like baseball? If they do, take in a game and spend some time with them. It may be a way to engage with them and start a great conversation.
One more thing from last month
To celebrate National Reading Month last month, I tracked the number of pages I read each day. So, my grand total of pages read was 2,077. I ended up reading an average of 67 pages per day and added 5 more books to my yearly goal.
April’s Theme – Life Lessons Learned from Baseball
April is when spring starts to come into season here in Minnesota. Another thing that comes into season is baseball. With spring training almost over for the major leagues, the regular season games will begin later this week.
Baseball has been played for many years. It is a game that has taught many lessons to many people, whether they have played the game or not. How about this one?
“It’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game.” – Grantland Rice, early 20th-century sportswriter and broadcaster
This month I am going to focus on baseball and those lessons. Check out my mentor page and see how I am doing it Selma P. Verde – Mentor Page
Book of the Month
With the theme of baseball this month, I wanted to feature a story about baseball as my choice for Book of the Month. The book I chose is a teen coming-of-age novel about an adult looking back on how being involved in baseball impacted his life. He learned many lessons about the game, about life and about people. This month’s book is called No More Games.
Selma’s Book Review
Book Title
No More Games
Author
Mike Gallo
Type of Book
Teen/Young Adult Fiction
Author Background
Mike Gallo is a sports enthusiast and endless dreamer. He is a social studies and language arts teacher at the middle school level. It has been a goal of his to publish a novel. And he did it.
Summary of the book
David Collins is a talented baseball player from the town of Riverview where everyone knows everyone. He wanted to seek a better life for himself away from his hometown but found it hard to do because he worried about what would happen to his friends. Just as he is starting to see how baseball could be his ticket out, he meets a girl named Becky which complicates his idea of leaving even more.
Reaction to the book
I really liked this book. The story was relatable and engaging. Once I got into the story, I had a hard time putting this book down. It would be a good read for a teen or young adult, even if you aren’t into baseball. The coming of age feel of the story would be relatable for teens and adults alike.
Link to the author
If you want to learn more about the author, here is a link to his website Mike Gallo
Link to the book
If you want to purchase a copy of No More Games, here is a link to Amazon – No More Games. Or you can pick it up from one of your local bookstores or shop Bookshop.org and have the purchase credited to them.
April is a special month
This month, my first book, The Hard Way celebrates 5 years in publication. To celebrate this awesome milestone, I will be doing a couple of Facebook and Instagram lives this month to not only talk about the book, but also read an excerpt from it. There will also be a special basket of goodies given away. Check back to my Facebook or Instagram pages this Wednesday to find out more.
