2 September 2014 JOLTIN’ JOE DIMAGGIO by Jonah Winter and James E. Ransome, ill., Atheneum, September 2014, 48p., ISBN: 978-1-4169-4080-7

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio

Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson,

Joltin’ Joe has left and gone away.”

-- Simon and Garfunkel (1968)

“Like most American boys, Joe mainly cared about one thing: baseball. Joe and his pals played baseball every day in the playground lot just up the hill from Fisherman’s Wharf.

“Joe’s dad was a fisherman from Italy, and he mainly cared about one thing too: fish. He expected all his sons to become fishermen just like him. But Joe hated boats, hated the smell of fish, and hated how hard his father worked for so little money. Joe would not become a fisherman, and that was that.”

Joe DiMaggio’s major league career ended years before I was born. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame when I was a baby in 1955. And yet, nearly sixty years later, when I asked the softball-playing thirteen-year-old girl down the block if she’d ever heard of Joe DiMaggio, she immediately responded that he’d been a baseball player and had been married to Marilyn Monroe.

Giuseppe Paolo (Joe) DiMaggio Jr. made quite a name for himself. At nineteen years old he was signed by the New York Yankees to replace the just-retired Babe Ruth. As a rookie, they paid him the Great Depression-era princely sum of $25,000. Now DiMaggio’s father didn’t mind that his son was not a fisherman.

Over his thirteen years with the Yankees he proved himself to be worth every penny. After 74 years, DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak remains the Major League record. (The closest someone has come since then was the since-disgraced Pete Rose, who had a 44-game streak.)

We learn all this and more about DiMaggio from JOLTIN’ JOE DIMAGGIO.

James E. Ransome hits it out of the park with his watercolor illustrations. On his website, Ransome explains that studying filmmaking taught him “how to pace a story with the aid of camera angles and framing images.” He uses this background to great effect as he depicts DiMaggio with his boyhood family, on the train with his teammates, and in action on the field. He also provides vivid images of a long-ago America.

In an author’s note, Jonah Winter further details the Yankee Clipper’s historic significance both on and off the field.

JOLTIN’ JOE DIMAGGIO makes it clear why my young neighbor knows about this long-ago American sports hero.

Richie Partington, MLIS

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