Much Ado About Baseball

Gr 5-7–Magic is afoot once again in Comity, MA, in this stand-alone companion novel to LaRocca’s Midsummer’s Mayhem. After moving to Comity, 12-year-old Trish Das worries about being accepted as the only girl on her baseball team. Making matters worse, Trish’s math puzzle competition rival Ben Messina plays on the same team. Insecure about his baseball skills and resentful of Trish’s most recent math competition victory, Ben clashes with her while his best friend, Abhi, schemes to get the two to become friends (à la Much Ado About Nothing). In this book told in alternating perspectives, Trish and Ben stumble across copies of a mysterious book called The Mathematics of the Wild, whose odd math puzzles seem to magically help the team and bring the former rivals together. But when the books disappear just before the championship game, Abhi’s life is endangered and they must seek answers in Comity’s enchanted woods. Fans of Midsummer’s Mayhem will delight in a return to the richly developed setting of Comity and its familiar quirky characters. A relatable sports plot about rivalry, teamwork, and forgiveness is elevated by lyrical descriptive writing and the unique intersection of mathematics and nature in the book’s puzzles, which readers will be eager to solve. Trish is Indian American, and Ben is white.