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Daniel is looking forward to a terrific summer. He has just finished third grade, his best friend’s birthday party is only a few days away, and best of all, he’ll have plenty of time to read up on butterflies and add to his collection. The only problem is his little brother. Joey is always in the way, he’s a tattletale, and worst of all, he’s a better baseball player than Daniel will ever be.

Things take a surprising turn when Joey has an accident and Daniel discovers that there’s more to his pesky brother—and to Daniel’s own abilities—than he expected.

Behind the Story

I began writing Baseball and Butterflies when my two sons, Peter and Christopher were young and always competing with each other. They were making me crazy and I found that writing about it helped to bring their squabbles into perspective for me. But the book is not really about Peter and Christopher. I got the idea for Joey to burn his hand from the time when I was young and my younger brother David burned his hand on the stove in the same way. The part about Danial not wanting to go to the birthday party is really based on the fact that I did not want to go to school when I was in kindergarten through second grade. And the idea to have the two brothers play on the baseball team as one player came from a news paper article I read. Material for my books comes from everything I do, read, and experience.

Illustrator: Linda Storm

Publisher: HarperCollins/Lothrop, Lee & Shepard

Buy the book: Amazon

Download the Teacher's Guide for this book. [1 MB PDF]