#30 Take Me Out to the Yakyu

Title:  Take Me Out to the Yakyu

Author:  Aaron Meshon

Illustrator: Aaron Meshon

Publisher:  Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Copyright: 2013

Pages:  37

Genre/Category:  Multicultural

I really like this book because it compares and contrasts two cultures. Just like in I Love Saturdays y domingos, this book has the American version on the left, and the Japanese version on the right. Take Me Out to the Yakyu is about a little boy who loves baseball. His American grandfather takes him to a ball game in America, while his Japanese grandfather takes him to a game in Japan.

The illustrations in this book were done in acrylic paint. The backgrounds are mostly done in solid colors with a few of the baseball scenes filled out in more detail. The aerial view shots of the stadium and the close up view of the food and other scenes are extremely detailed. The text is varied in this book. Some are done in speech bubbles in the middle of the page, while others are set at the top of the page in regular text. The colors in this book are bright, with the backgrounds a contrasting red and blue. 

I would definitely recommend this book for all ages. While I expect that younger students might have a hard time with some of the vocabulary words used in this story, I think it would be a very good experience for them to hear some of the words used in Japan for baseball. I think this would be a great book to get for boys to read. For older grades, I think this book would be a good start point to have students find words in other languages that mean the same thing as our English words.