LUCKY AT BAT

A middle-grade novel focuses on a boy, his pet rat, and a shared love of baseball.

Lucky is one lucky rat. Rescued by a woman with a 10-year-old boy named Jack, he lives a fairly stress-free life with his brother, Gus-Gus, as household pets. The rats can talk to each other, having conversations that humans only hear as squeaks. When baseball season starts, Jack introduces them to baseball on TV, and Lucky loves it. It gets even better when Jack starts Little League, bringing Lucky to the games with him. There, Lucky is befriended by Fred, a dog who explains the rules of baseball to him. Lucky, it seems, has found his calling, becoming the team mascot and soon giving Jack and his fellow players signals from the sidelines. This leads Jack’s team, the Bulldogs, to victory over the Devil Rays, its archenemies. It also causes Danny, one of the Devil Rays’ players, to threaten Lucky, with the boy subsequently throwing a baseball and injuring the little rat. Soon, Lucky is on the mend and back at the baseball field, where Jack and his friends Dayna and Trevor lecture Danny about hurting helpless animals. In a climactic game, the Bulldogs again face the Devil Rays. The Goldenbergs, a mother-and-son team, have concocted a sweet tale of friendship not only among three wiser-than-their-years kids, but also between Jack and his two pet rodents. There are some nice descriptions throughout the book—Jack “smelled of candy, French fries, and home,” says Lucky in one captivating passage—and Cutler’s simple illustrations at the beginning of each chapter help draw a picture of the clever rat and his antics. There are some moments when Jack and his friends seem more mature than 10-year-old kids would be. For instance, when Trevor and Dayna come to visit after Lucky is injured, they bring doughnuts. “We come bearing gifts,” Dayna says, a rather grown-up phrase for someone her age. But that’s a minor quibble. This is a largely delightful story about children and pets with a few life lessons thrown in for good measure.

A cuddly, intelligent rodent becomes the hero of a sports tale that oozes charm.