The Batboy Book Summary

This quarter I read the realistic fiction book, The Batboy by Mike Lupica. This book is a story about a 14 year old boy named Brian Dudley. Son of a former pitcher and an avid baseball fan, Brian gets his dream summer job: the bat boy for his favorite team the Detroit Tigers. When it seems like his summer cannot get any better, his all-time favorite player Hank Bishop is signed to the team. At the beginning, Hank is cold and yells at Brian a lot, but in the end they become friends. At the end of the summer, Brian is in for the best weekend of his life when the Tigers have a home stand with Hank currently sitting at 499 career home runs. I really liked this book because I could relate well with the main character. Brian is the same age as me and we both like baseball. The plot is very interesting and the end, although predictable, is satisfying. The characters in this story such as Brian and Hank were very well developed. The main character, Brian, is very believable because he is more or less an average 14 year old. He spent most of his life with his mom, he goes to school, has friends, and loves baseball. Brian is a

For example, when Hank hits his 500th career homerun, Lupica describes how far and how high the ball is flying. He describes the ball’s point of view and how the ball flies so well that it make the reader feel as if they are in the ballpark to experience it. He also uses good word choice in the more dramatic scenes. For example, Lupica describes every second of Brian’s final at-bat in the championship. He does a good job of being descriptive but keeping the reader’s interest at the same time. He makes great use of simile and metaphor in this book. For example, when he is talking about being so close up to a dramatic game he says “It was one of those moments when Brian felt as if baseball was close enough for him to reach out and touch. Like his hands were around the handle of a