Pun's Fun: Batter Up, Wombat by Helen Lester

The dynamic due of author Helen Lester and illustrator Lynn Munsinger are back! Coming off of their runaway hit, Hooway for Wodney Wat, Lester and Munsinger have put together another pun-ny tale of the outsider who, by merely doing what he does best, becomes the insider in the clinch!

Wombat, a newcomer from Australia, wanders onto the sports field, perhaps looking for a game of his favorite sport--rugby. Next to the puny little critters on the team of losers (last place in the North American Wildlife League) who bear the unlikely name of the Champs, Wombat looks like just the power hitter they need. When he introduces himself as Wombat, the players interpret his Aussie accent all wrong and think his nickname is Whambat. With a name like that, he's gotta be the batter they need!

Despite his disclaimers, "Whambat" is uniformed and on the field before he knows what hit him!(Actually, it was the first pitch.) The problem is that baseball terminology loses a little bit in the translation from American English to Australian English. Wombat makes all the Amelia Bedelia-style mistakes when he tries to follow the action: to him a bat is a flying mammal, a pitcher is something from which you pour drinks, stealing third base means picking it up and sneaking away. When the Champs coach him to "tag second," Wombat taps the second baseman and gleefully says, "You're it!" When the team shouts for him to run home, he asks incredulously "All the way to Australia?"

Suddenly a storm blows in over the field and someone shouts "Tornado!" The Champs look about for a dugout to hide in, but the Wildlife League doesn't seem to have provided one. Not to worry. With a genuine Australian wombat around, digging a dugout is a cinch, and Wombat tunnels out a storm-proof dugout and keeps the Champs safe from the storm. The story ends with the maxim that "the most important insider was the outsider!"

Kids easily identify with Lester's main characters, whose differences from the norm often turn out to be their saving graces. In Tacky the Penguin, Tacky's loud and effusive song-and-dance routines which affront the too-too proper penguins saves them from a trio of shifty land speculators. Likewise, in Hooway for Wodney Wat, nervous, shy Rodney Rat, who absolutely CANNOT say his R's, saves the whole class from the bullying newcomer Camilla Capybara, with his "Simon says, "Go west." While the rest of the rodents, who are used to Rodney's mispronunciations, flop down and take a breather, Camilla grimly marches off toward the setting sun, determined to win the game no matter what!

Children love to see the outcast becomes the hero, especially when he does so by resolutely being himself. Lynn Munsinger's illustrations, with the wonderfully expressive faces of all her characters, evoke plenty of giggles as Lester's story of the outsider's becoming a winner satisfies the heart.