Customer Reviews

Samurai Shortstop

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Alan Gratz's triumphant first YA, SAMURAI SHORTSTOP, opens on the narrator's description of watching his beloved uncle gut himself. Baseball and violence carry this impressively researched depiction of Meiji Japan, and of relationships, between young males, and between father and son. In this polished, always suspenseful story, son and father help one another mature.

Martha Bennett Stiles

It's 1890 and you're in Tokyo, Japan. Between classes in the most prestigious high school in town and baseball practice, you learn the old ways--the ways of the samurai. That's Toyo Shimada's life and we get the pleasure of going along for the ride thanks to Alan Gratz's brilliant story telling.

Toyo suffers from familiar teen angst: a parent who doesn't understand him and friends who try to understand him, but often fail. It's the core of most teen stories, but Toyo's world is changing. Old Japan is dying and a new Japan is rising.

His father represents the old Japan. When the emperor reforms their ancient military system and requires all samurai to hang up their swords, Toyo's family is caught in the middle. The opening scene, where Toyo and his father assist Toyo's uncle in seppuku, ritual suicide, is so intense that you'll wonder if Toyo's just having a bad dream.

Even though Toyo's father isn't samurai in the traditional sense, he too decides he can't live in the new Japan. He expects Toyo to assist him in seppuku, when the time comes. First, he must teach Toyo the ways of bushido, the warrior's code.

Between lessons and baseball practice, Toyo learns to meditate and use a sword--and worries about his father. When the time comes, will he have the courage to do what has to be done? Baseball is his passion, and as applies bushido to baseball, he comes to terms with the changing world around him and begins his journey into manhood.

Samurai Shortstop is the story of Toyo's search for his own path in a time of social change and family turmoil. Toyo's personal struggle is one all teens can appreciate. He struggles with peer pressure, studies, and parental control and expectations. Nineteenth century Japan comes alive and provides the color and unexpected tension that every good story needs.

Samurai Shortstop is about a 16-year old Japanese boy, Toyo. Right from the first sentence of the book it really grabs your attention. Toyo's uncle is preparing to commit sepukku. This is considered an honorable way to kill yourself in Japan. The story draws you into the life of Toyo and helps you to understand his relationship with his father and learning the art of bushido. He goes off to a private boarding school where he learns how to stand up for himself and fight off the seniors who are out to torture the first years. I liked this book because it combines the sport of baseball along with Toyo's high school experience in Japan. If you want to read a book that is hard to put down and will keep you intrigued until the very last page, then this is the book for you.

What an amazing debut! Toyo's story grabbed me from the first page with his uncle's preparation for ritual suicide. I couldn't wait to get to the end of the book to see if Toyo could successfully apply bushido principles to baseball, to see if he and his father could bridge just a little of the gap between them, if he could ever forgive his uncle for leaving him.

But now I want more!

Bravo, Alan, bravo!

Books that attract and hold the interest of boys are rare and in high demand. Alan Gratz's book, Samurai Shortstop, will do both. In his first 5 pages of text, the stage is set for this powerful, thought provoking YA novel. With well-chosen words Mr. Gratz promotes understanding of cultural differences in a fascinating, well-researched manner without once digressing from the thrill of his page-turning story.

Introducing understanding of an ancient Japanese life-style into the hearts and minds of twenty-first century multi-cultural readers, then integrating its highest principles with a modern-day western sport, represents a formidable task which Alan Gratz has accomplished admirably.

While this book will certainly hold the interest of male readers, any reader will appreciate this excellent, well written story.

I loved this book! The setting, Japan around 1890, was fascinating. The author made the city and the boys' boarding school come alive with selected details. I loved the character of Toyo, a boy who is coming of age at a time when the world is changing drastically. Toyo is under pressure from his father to reject the new ways (baseball, for one, introduced by the Americans) and respect and live up to the old ways (of the samurai), even though the old ways are dead or dying away. In addition to the stress of which path to choose, which kind of person to be, Toyo has to contend with his classmates in the boarding school -- and each and every one of us who has gone through school knows that this is not only not easy, it is often the most important conflict a young person faces before he or she leaves school and enters the larger world. Definitely worth reading!

This book is about a boy that goes to a boarding school named Toyo. The upperclassmen there love to terrorize the younger kids. Toyo is a great shortstop but the seniors don't let him play. The older kids are tormenting Toyo but he has enough to worry about without that. His uncle comitted suiside only weeks before and he is scared his father will be the next. His father decides to teach Toyo bushido and Toyo finds out that baseball is a lot like bushido. In the end the seniors end up letting him on the team because of him standing up for himself. When the team plays a big game a fight starts and the Japanese people beat up an American causing the relationship between Japan and America to be ruined. They decide to settle the matter with a baseball game. The relationship is restored and everyone is happy with what happens.

This book is a great book because it combines the political effects of the Meiji, or reformation of Japan, along with the social effects as well. It was very informative but also a very intriguing and suspenseful book. It gives you a great understanding of what the Samuria had to deal with when they were ordered to give up their way of life.

I really enjoyed this book. The only thing I would change is to move the historical information from the end of the book to the front of the book. I had no idea this novel was historical fiction until after I had finished reading it.

I purchased extra copies to give to my baseball/softball playing grandchildren.

My son read this book at his high school and just had to have it! He loves the author's way of writing and reading about another culture.