In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson by Bette Bao Lord (audio)
Unabridged book on Playaway, 3.25 hours. Read by Melissa Hughes. Audio Bookshelf, 2008.
This sweet, old-fashioned novel opens up in 1947, or the year of the Boar, at the new year, in Chung KIng, China, where Shirley Temple Wong, doesn't really have a name, except Bandit. She lives in a compound with her grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and mother. Her father is in America. Shortly after the year of the Boar commences, Shirley learns that she and her mother will travel to the United States, to Brooklyn to live.
Once there, she attends P.S. 8 and tries her very hardest to assimilate. Her experiences as an English learner will resonate even now, although the book has a very strong sense of time and setting. Shirley Temple Wong is nearly the only Chinese student in her school. When another Chinese student joins her grade, Shirley rushes over, excitedly speaking Chinese, thrilled to be able to converse comfortably with someone at last. Imagine her chagrin, when she discovers that the new girl, though Chinese, was born in America and understands no Chinese.
Gradually, she makes friends after rather hysterically befriending the class bully. She even learns to play stick ball and develops a love for the Brooklyn Dodgers, dem bums, and Jackie Robinson.
There's a slightly dated quality to the story, especially the ethnic slurs that get tossed around albeit briefly. But it's a short read and it has great baseball in it, and students at my school continue to check it out.