LitPick Review
Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh takes place in Yuba City, California when World War II is raging. The story is about a girl named Maria, whose dad is from India and her mom is from Mexico. Maria longs to play softball on a newly forming girls’ softball team, but she must convince her parents to allow her to play. Then, the county board decides not to build the new softball field they are going to play on. However, their teacher encourages Maria and her classmates to speak up to keep the ball field by going to the county board meeting in Yuba City. During softball practice, another girl on the team, who is of German descent, hits Maria in the head on purpose while pitching! Will Maria ever make it to the meeting in Yuba City?
This historical novel teaches you a lot about how hard it is to grow up with immigrant parents in a unfair world.
Opinion:
I liked Step Up to the Plate, Maria Singh because I learned about how unjust it was for immigrant families to live in our country during World War II. Also, I liked how it talked about the daily life of Mexican-Indian families in California. I admired Maria for her courage during hard times and for helping to fight for the softball field. Overall, I learned a lot about living in a different time period in California.
There were also some things I didn’t like about the book. Some parts of the book were slow to read and kind of boring. At the beginning, I found it hard to understand all of the information about the setting and the characters. I was confused and bored until the part of the book when Maria started to play softball. The most exciting part of the book was when Maria got hit in the head with a ball but that was toward the end of the story. The book is long; there are 276 pages! Overall, I enjoyed reading the story, but the second half of the book was better than the first.
