Listen Up, Guys, You'll Like These Books!

Do you guys remember how I told you about the Percy Jackson books? Aren't you glad I did? Well, here's another series I'm excited about and I bet you'll get excited about them too. It's the Barnstormers series by Loren Long and Phil Bildner. They're great--they've got suspense, magic, baseball, danger, creepy bad guys--in short, everything you'd want in a book! I've written about the first two on 3-19-08 and 4-1-08 and I've just finished the third, so I'll tell you about all three of them at once.

It's about the Payne family; the three kids Griffith, Ruby, Graham and their mom. Where's the father? He didn't come back from the Spanish-American War (the books are set in 1899) The father's friends from the war (they were all in Colonel Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders) formed a baseball team called the Travelin' Nine. They plan to go around the country and play exhibition games in order to raise money for the Payne family, who owes ten thousand dollars! The father left them his baseball, but when the kids put their hands on it, strange things, and I mean really strange things, happen during the games. Could the baseball be magic? And who is this creepy guy called The Chancellor and why does Uncle Owen tell the kids to beware of him? Why does Uncle Owen tell them that they are in very great danger, particularly young Graham? And, whatever they do, don't let the Chancellor know about the ball!!!You got to read these books!!! They'll suck you into the story and make you want to get the next one right away!!

There are three books in the series so far:




The series is divided into "Games". The first book is Game 1: Porkopolis







The second is Game 2: The River City







And the third is Game 3: The Windy City



This third book ends up with a real cliffhanger--Griffith, the oldest boy, finds the family in the worst situation possible! WHAT HAPPENS NEXT??? Fortunately, there will be at least three more books, but the fourth one won't be out until spring of '09! Now I have to wait ANOTHER WHOLE YEAR to find out! I guess all you Harry Potter fans had to go through the same thing. It's a good thing there are a lot of other good books out there to keep me occupied until then.

Carl