A High Five for Glenn Burke Hardcover – February 25, 2020

I will admit to getting a bit teary-eyed as I finished this beautiful middle grade novel on my flight just now because we need this story more than ever. Phil Bildner has crafted a sensitive, beautiful coming out story set in the world of baseball and it is everything I hoped it would be and more. This is for all the kids that think they are broken but aren’t, this is for all of us who see kids within the LGBTQIA community as the complete humans they are. Every kid deserves to have this book in their library, Silas Wade will be with me for a long time. Adding this book to my best books of the year list for elementary and up #pernillerecommends

Wonderful story, beautifully written. An important book to help understand the coming out process - important for queer kids to be reflected with honesty and care, and important for everyone else to help build understanding. And a fantastic dose of baseball jargon and lore. Loved it.

Interesting book about a topic I knew little about. Silas does a biography project about Glenn Burke- the inventor of the high five both because he loves baseball and because Glenn Burke was gay. Silas is also gay but is scared to come out to his family and friends. He begins with his best friend Zoey, making him feel relieved and terrified. This is an engaging book about being yourself.

This book is absolutely wonderful. Planning on using it with my middle school book club. It brings up relevant and crucial topics that kids should be reading about now. It was funny, heart-warming, and though-provoking. Plus, the Sandlot references were awesome!

What a fun but so important book! Silas’ voice shines throughout this novel and the author truly captures both the excitement of being part of a team as well as the anxiety kids feel if they are perceived as “different”. The message of “you be you” is a powerful one for any age!

A huge High Five to Phil Bildner for writing such a beautiful book. I can’t wait for my sons to read this. A beautiful and brave journey for Silas and the love and support he gets along the way.

Absolutely beautiful, and absolutely a must read. Other reviewers have already said all the right things, and every bit of it is true.

How much do I love this book? It's a home run. It's free box seats in the second row behind home plate (first row would be pretentious) at a minor league baseball game on a clear & sunny April day, and your favorite batter has just hit a line drive. But more importantly, how much does my 7 year old baseball-loving son love this book? A GRAND SLAM.Phil Bildner knows baseball. My boy loves baseball, history, and chapter books. I knew it might be a stretch to read a middle grade book together with a 7 year old, but he LOVED it right from the start. I actually can't think of a recent book that made him laugh SO much. Given that this spring's Little League season was cancelled, it was great to immerse him in a book that really "got" baseball.The chapters with Silas actually playing the game were pure joy. My son's only request would have been that the last chapter should have had a play-by-play of with actual baseball playing.For a reader younger than the usual interest level for the book, he had no difficulty following the story and there was nothing inappropriate for his age. The only thing that flew over his head was truly understanding why it would have been so hurtful for a character to claim that his platonic friend was actually his girlfriend, as well as the implication that they were doing something "other than karaoke" together. We were both fascinated by the high five history and by the tragic history of how Glenn Burke was treated by the MLB, and we've spent some time reading some articles and watching YouTube videos about Glenn Burke. We both cried halfway through the book when we did our own research on what happened to Glenn Burke after he played for the Dodgers and A's.What I found most interesting (and heartening) in his reaction to the book is that it's also hard for him to understand why it would be so scary for Silas to tell his closest friends and loved ones that he is gay. He has gay uncles, the first wedding he attended was one with two bridges, his mom has gay best friends, he's read Prince and Knight and Sparkle Boy and a dozen other books affirming of different kinds of families and different ways to express gender, and gay marriage has been legal since he's been talking, so he knows no other reality than "love is love". And when I tell him that even when he was an infant, it was illegal in some states for gay people to marry the people they love, it feels like ancient history to him. "But why, Mama? It just makes no sense that people would be so mean about love. It's just love! It's just who you are!"As an older reader, I really *got* the terror that Bildner expressed...the racing words, the racing thoughts, the inability to focus, the pervasive fear. I'm so grateful that, at least in some pockets of our society, this just might not be so scary for our children when they are older. Amidst all the gloom in the world today, I am heartened that I understand Silas' terror more than my child does.This book "gets" baseball and gets baseball players. It gets friendship and it gets how it feels to have loving but busy, distracted parents. It gets adolescence. It gets to the heart of the matter. Get this book!