awake
This slim graphic novel tells of the life of Satchel Paige, famed player of the Negro Leagues. Chapters are from the various years of Paige's career, and he enjoyed a long career as a pitcher, working until he was in his 60s. The text is spare and powerful, detailing the vagaries of the Jim Crow laws that prevented Paige and others from playing in the majors among other atrocities. The narrator is Emmett Wilson, a would be ball player who hits one of Paige's pitches. His career ends with that first play, but over the years he continues to watch the progress of Paige's career.
Illustrations are in black and white with a monochromatic wash of green over the playing fields as well as the other fields, those of the sharecropping farmers, also victims of Jim Crow. This novel should find a place in history classrooms as it highlights one of the darker periods of history both in sports and in the larger world. A bibliography and a "panel" discussion that provides additional information about the references in the story (sharecropper cottages, lynchings, etc.) are lovely additions to this novel.