Good evening my wonderful readers, this blog post comes from a content little blogger. After having a long day at work I came home and met up with a very dear friend and had a lovely meal and a big giggle. Now, it’s time to bring you another review, which makes me very excited! I haven’t read a children’s book in a little while so I was very excited to get this one written up and posted to you. In other news I am 700 hits away from 30,000 hits which is crazy thank you to everyone that has looked at my little blog and enjoyed it, I owe it too you all! For now onto the review!

Twelve-year-old April O’Day’s summer has gotten off to a flying start. As the new bat retriever for the Harpoons, her hometown’s minor league team, she’s fetching bats and doling out great advice to players and coaches alike. In a word, she’s becoming indispensable. But mysterious things are happening at Haney Field, which April and her best friend – and fellow baseball enthusiast – Darren Plummer are determined to uncover. As they quickly learn, this is no ordinary season. In fact, it’s a whole new ball game.

I love a children’s book; I don’t get the joy of reading them often but any children’s book that can be read and enjoyed by an adult just shows how wonderful it really is. I also don’t read a huge number of books that revolve around sports so I was very interested to see how it would all pan out. Firstly, I loved the mixture of genres; it has a hint of supernatural, the sport element using the baseball a little history and some mystery thrown it right at the end. So, I’ll fill you in on a few details; April O’Day is off for the summer and she has won a contest! One that allows her to be ‘bat-girl’ for a week for the minor league baseball team of her hometown; called, the Harpoons. April actually does a wonderful job and she is asked to continue as the batgirl for the rest of the summer. Sounds idyllic right? Well yes, until her and her friend Danny see a ghost on the field and decide to investigate; then the story really starts!

I really enjoyed this book; the characters are really well built up and developed throughout the book however I liked how the author kept them as typical twelve year old characters. I am always very impressed when authors can write as younger characters than themselves as it shows a real mature type of writing. I also loved that the hero of the story was a baseball-loving female twelve year old! Its just genius! She is also an incredibly spunky character; she knows baseball inside out and could even teach the coach a thing or two which I know the kids will absolutely love! She’s proud but not arrogant and it makes her incredibly likeable! I liked how neither the mystery nor the supernatural over powered the other and they intertwined nicely throughout. The twists and turns were well balanced with a real understanding of how to keep the suspense building. The plot doesn’t move too quickly but it has pace and it follows smoothly which is the most important part when discussing the pace of a book. I didn’t quite get the end of the mystery but I did enjoy it when it was finally revealed.

I would definitely recommend this to any child; it’s a wonderfully sweet but interesting book and I know that it would definitely intrigue a child into reading more. I am an absolute sucker for a good mystery and this one is such a rioting maze of clues that will continue to interest a child and maybe one day they will become a book lover just like me. Wonderfully written, wonderfully devised and a really intriguing read!