3.5
About the B'nai Bagels
ByPublisher Description
Mark Setzer thought studying for his Bar Mitzvah and having his best friend move away created enough aggravation in his life. But then his mother becomes the new manager of his Little League team and drags his older brother, Spencer, along as coach. Miraculously, the team thrives, but in the process Mark learns some unpleasant truths about someone he thought he knew.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesAbout the B'nai Bagels Reviews
3.5
“I mostly enjoyed this book. It was a loving portrait of a mid-20th century Jewish family, with a little baseball sprinkled on top. The family (specifically the mother) needs to adjust to her older son Spencer's growing independence, and she does this by becoming the manager for her younger son Mark's Little League team, and roping in her older son as the coach. Soon it becomes even more of a family affair, as the father and aunt also become involved. This creates a lot of complications for the family as their roles of mother-sons and manager-coach-player now "overlap" but through managing these new roles and learning where the boundaries lie, they all grow, learn some lessons, and become closer by the end of the book.
The other main theme is the main character Mark (Moshe)'s own growing up that he has to do. He starts off the story estranged from his best friend, who has moved to the rich part of town and also found a different best buddy. Mark's efforts over the course of the book to win back his friend, improve at baseball, and study for his Bar Mitzvah pay off in the end.
The dialogue is consistently cute, funny, and engaging, and I found myself chuckling a few times. At times the banter feels a little "too" cute, but the Yiddish-influenced expressions felt very authentic. The whole depiction of the neighborhood and the various ethnic, social, and class differences, and how those affect the dynamics of managing a Little League team felt very realistic (and honestly like a time capsule!).
This book is still quite well-written and readable, but I don't think it's relatable to young people anymore. It feels at this point like historical fiction of the distant past, and would probably appeal the most to adults who want to be transported to a 1960's suburban mixed-ethnicity neighborhood, where kids walk to school, no one's ever heard of a bagel, every woman is a house wife and a Playboy magazine costs $.75.
Speaking of which! My main criticism is how this book treats its female characters. The mother/manager Bessie is a fantastic main character, and she handles everything with grace, humor, and determination. The aunt and a side character, Fortune "Cookie" Rivera (😃) are also written with care, as are the father and all the young boys on the baseball team, but the other Little League mothers are mostly treated as ridiculous-- overprotective, or overly involved in their sons lives. One mother buys Playboy for her son, another creates an entire scene in the middle of an ongoing match when she realizes her son has had a glimpse-- and both these reactions are Wrong, btw. The correct thing to do is to let him buy it himelf and hide it, then let him pretend you don't know! Which is what Mark's mother does, of course. And in this book she proceeds to teach all the others mothering-lessons through her superior Baseball management. Anyway, I think the reason the whole Playboy storyline (which is a major part of the plot) rubs me wrong is because the women in the book are treated as "dumb housewives".
Which makes this book sound worse than it was! I actually enjoyed it quite a bit and read it in two days.”
About E.L. Konigsburg
E.L. Konigsburg is the only author to have received the Newbery Medal and a Newbery Honor in the same year. In 1968, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler won the Newbery Medal and Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth was named a Newbery Honor Book. Almost thirty years later she won the Newbery Medal once again for The View from Saturday. Among her other acclaimed books are Silent to the Bone, The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place, and A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver.
Other books by E.L. Konigsburg
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