Stealing Home by Ellen Schwartz

Orphaned Joey Sexton is half-black, half-Jewish. He was too white for his mostly black Bronx neighbourhood. Now he has been sent to live with his mother’s family in a Jewish neighbourhood in Brooklyn, where he’s taunted for being black. This new place is his only chance of having a real home. But how can he belong here, when everything he does seems to infuriate his unbending, overly-strict Grandfather? How will he—a passionate baseball player and Yankees fan—ever feel at home here when everyone in his new family roots for the Brooklyn Dodgers? Baseball seems to be a symbol of all that’s insurmountable between him and his relatives, but in the end it turns out to bring them together. Jackie Robinson, the first black man to play in the major leagues, inspires this change, too. Read and find out how. The story also features a very spunky girl cousin who plays a mean game of baseball. Not just for baseball fans.