Title: Stealing Home: Summer of 1958
Author: Roger Rule
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 978-1-6655-3713-1
Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Actrion & Adventure
Pages: 131
Reviewed by: Allison Walker

Read Book Review

Readers are introduced to Will, an upper-middle class suburbanite growing up in the racially and politically charged years following Brown vs. Board of Education, but before the Civil Rights Act. Will is a stereotypical boy of his era; he enjoys playing with his model train and shooting his BB gun. Also like many children of this time period, Will’s opinion of “colored people” is reflective of the inherent bigotry his society is fighting to overcome. Ashamed of his children’s attitude, Will’s father arranges to bring home an orphaned black boy for the weekend. Alex isn’t so different from Will and the two boys enjoy a weekend of playing checkers and having a picnic at the local park. But at the end of the weekend, Will’s prized, autographed baseball disappears and he cannot quite overcome his previous prejudice to stop from accusing Alex of stealing it.

Stealing Home: Summer of 1958, written by Roger Rule, is a sweet boyhood story with themes age-appropriate for middle schoolers. The mystery of the missing baseball and lessons the story imparts are exactly what one expects from a children’s chapter book. Roger Rule does an admirable job writing about complex issues in ways which are easy for children to understand. Most of all, his book is interesting and exciting for children to read.

Parents will be impressed by the lessons about empathy that Rule writes. For example, Will has a moment of epiphany when he thinks about how nervous he is to invite a stranger into his home. He realizes Alex must be terrified to stay the weekend with a strange family whom he has nothing in common with. These are important lessons for Will to learn as he becomes a more mature and accepting character, and important for young readers to learn as they grow up, too.

Choosing to place a children’s book about racial equality in the late 1950’s is a difficult choice. Rule is forced to downplay the violence of the civil rights movement even as he attempts to write a story about the racial prejudice of the decade. Without understanding that context, which some modern children might not, it’s impossible to fully appreciate the story. In today’s society, we would call Will a real jerk. In fact, his family is very progressive for that time period. His father is absolutely radical.

Equally interesting is the socioeconomic disparity between Will and his neighborhood friend, Robert. Although the two white boys are fast friends, Will is sometimes embarrassed by Robert. When Robert admits to stealing Will’s baseball, Will is furious but forgives him. The relationships between the characters really serve to deliver the main message of the book: that people, regardless of race, are complex. Good people can perform dishonest acts and cruel people can behave compassionately.

Stealing Home is everything a child, and their parent, could want from a chapter book. Rule does an excellent job keeping the themes age-appropriate. Stealing Home: Summer of 1958 is a book children will enjoy and parents will approve of.