About The B'Nai Bagels

This is a great book about friendship and people from different backgrounds coming together and good people who make mistakes and doing the right thing. It also has a major character who espouses a childbearing philosophy that isn't that popular right now, and I think that's a wonderful opportunity for kids to ask themselves what *they* think and why. Critical thinking is so important, and this is how it starts. I like this author a very lot for so many reasons, and I'm keeping this one on my Kindle because I'll want to reread it soon.

E. L. Konigsburg is just a great writer. I love everything I have read of hers and I do not think there are many books she has written that I have missed. B'nai Bagles is another great one. Story, characters and theme. It has it all.

As an E. L. Konigsberg fan, I read several of her marvelous books when I was a children's librarian years ago. I remembered "About the B'nai Bagels" as a fun exploration of baseball and diversity, and thought my grandson would like it. Unfortunately, the novel has not "aged well." I had forgotten that a significant part of the story refers to the boys' fascination with Playboy magazine, how different boys and mothers handled it, etc. Playboy was not actually porn, but kids are exposed to so much worse now. Online pornography is now deemed a "public health crisis" in 16 states, due to its addictiveness, links to sexual violence, child abuse, ED, divorce, etc. I am returning the book.

Jewish religious practice and littleleague baseball are not major league (poor pun) items in Australia. Discovering more about these elements attracted me to this book as I have never read any works by Konigsburg before. It is the tale of a young boy (Mark) preparing for his "coming of age ceremony" and his love of baseball. His brother(Spencer) almost made the state championship as player in the B'Nai Team. We witness the inner turmoil of Mark as his mother becomes the team manager and his brother becomes the team coach and on top of that he must complete his Hebrew studies. It is a terrific story about little league basebase and growing up in a loving, caring, modern jewish family, I only wish there was a little more description about the baseball games played by the B'Nai Bagels.

I typically adore Konigsburg's work, but this sweet story is a little slow, dated, and not appropriate at times. As a teacher and tutor who reads many young adult stories, it did take awhile for me to get through this.