Take Me Out to the Ball Game [Hardcover]

This is a unique offering of a book and CD, recorded byCarly Simon, featuring the classic song. Batter up! Get out the peanuts and Cracker Jacks, and get ready for fun with America's national sport! The unofficial anthem of baseball has never sounded or looked better than it does in this joyful edition, complete with a CD featuring the inimitable Carly Simon.

Colorful, collage-like illustrations are kids' tickets into Sluggers Stadium, where two animal teams step up to the plate and vie for victory--all cheered on by Katie Casey, the baseball-loving cat. And what a game it is! Giraffe winds up at the pitcher's mound, hoping for a strikeout. But, with a thwack, ball meets bat and Crocodile is off and running. Can Tiger tag him out at first? He'd better, because Elephant's up next and that will cause a commotion!

Open the pages, put on the CD--which contains I Gave My Love a Cherry and Scarborough Fair, along with Take Me Out to the Ball Game --and introduce young fans to baseball.♦ The song may have been written by a man who had never been to a game, and it was first sung on the vaudeville circuit of early-20th-century America, but it has long since taken its place as the venerable and beloved anthem of baseball. Of course, modern fans do not include the original verse when they sing the refrain during the seventh-inning stretch. The fact that the lyrics are about a young woman's deep love of the game would greatly surprise them. Katie Casey saw all the games, knew all the players by their first names. The song has been illustrated often, in myriad styles and techniques. Hirao creates a cast of enthusiastic animals to populate the teams and spectators at Sluggers Stadium. While the fans, including Katie the cat, are of mostly domesticated varieties, the players are alligators, giraffes, elephants, hippos and other wildlife. It's a visual tour de force, with double-page spreads of large, action-packed, brilliantly colorlc