"He's Coming Around the First Turn"

Hey, guys, I have a few minutes for a quick post. I was up this morning at 6:00 and got right down to reading. My first book was Black Diamond: The Story of the Negro Baseball Leagues by Patricia C. McKissack and Frederick McKissack, Jr. It was very interesting. Reaffirmed my belief that, in the early days of baseball, the players were larger than life. Especially when they had to deal with all the racism. After that, I started on Heart of a Samurai by Margi Preuss. It's based on a true story of a teenaged Japanese boy who was stranded on an island and rescued by American whalers. Was very absorbing. I'm a slow reader and didn't finish it when I had to stop at 11:00 am. The rest of the day was spent in taking care of obligations (and, as I said last year, REAL MEN take care of their obligations!) But now I'm back and should finish the book tonight. The good people who run the Challenge let us spend an hour looking at other blogs in the Challenge for every 5 hours that we read, so I'll do that and then crack the books. Don't have time to give full reviews right now--maybe I'll do that later in the week. In the meantime, if you want to see some good books with diversity that have appeared on this blog, take a look at Call It Courage by Armstrong Sperry (the first book I ever reviewed here), the Alvin Ho books by Lenore Look, the Gabriel's Horses trilogy by Allison Hart, the Tiger's Apprentice trilogy by Laurence Yep, and Ice Drift by Theodore Taylor and The Basket Counts by Matt Christopher, both of which I read for last year's Challenge. Hey--I read two books on diversity last year. As always, the Iron Guy is ahead of his time! (You can click on the tabs under this post to see reviews of those books)
PS--I almost forgot one of my very favorites--The Adventurous Deeds of Deadwood Jones by Helen Hemphill.