Twelve-year-old House Jackson — star pitcher and team captain of the Aurora County All-Stars — has been sidelined for a whole year with a broken elbow. He's finally ready to play, but the team's only game of the year is scheduled for the same time as the town's 200th-anniversary pageant. Now House must face the pageant's director, full-of-herself Frances Shotz, and get his team out of this mess. There's also a mysterious old recluse who has died and left House a wheezy old dog named Eudora Welty — and a puzzling book of poetry by Walt Whitman. House makes surprising and valuable discoveries about family, friendship, poetry . . . and baseball in this book by Deborah Wiles. Launch date: August 2007.