By Sarah Kapit
An autistic girl who lives to pitch writes letters to her baseball hero and fights to keep her spot on a boys' team.
Vivy taught herself a knuckleball, and it turns out she's good enough for a real team. She starts writing letters to VJ Capello, a pro pitcher she once met, and he writes back. Those letters carry her through her first season: parents who don't think a girl belongs on the mound, an autistic girl at that, and one boy on the team who won't stop needling her about it.
This is written by an autistic author about an autistic girl, and it shows: you're not watching Vivy from outside, you're right in her handwriting. The letters keep the chapters short and fast, which is a gift for a child who stalls out on thick novels. An autistic child sees themselves as the hero of a sports story, and a baseball-mad child just gets a great baseball story. Either way, Vivy's the pitcher, not the lesson.