Every once in a while, however, he does prefer that I take the reading reigns and one of our recent selections was Slumpbuster from The Super Sluggers series by Kevin Markey.
I picked this up around the holidays when Jackson started to show an interest in chapter books and since he's a walking encyclopedia of baseball knowledge (the other day he was talking about Juan Uribe's home run totals from last year), I figured the subject matter was a slam dunk (look at me mixing sports metaphors).
The Super Sluggers series follows the exploits of the Rambletown Ramblers, a little league baseball team. The lead character of Slumpbuster is the Ramblers third baseman, Banjo H. Bishbash aka The Walloper. As you might have guessed from the title, the story involves Banjo's first ever batting slump. To make matters worse, the slump is a visible, tangible black cloud that follows him wherever he goes.
The book is set in the modern day but is written in a Runyon-esque style with colorful character names and expressions that sound like they were plucked from the Great Depression. Some might find this is over the top, or even cheesy, but Jackson really appreciated it.
A nice touch by the author is at the end of the book where he lists the full Rambletown Ramblers roster (say that three times fast) along with their stats for the season. Jackson ate that up with a spoon (and a kid-sized bag of chewing tobacco).
So far there are two other books in The Super Sluggers series and we'll be picking up the next selection shortly. If I'm lucky, Jackson might even let me read it with him.