Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow by James Sturm and Rich Tommaso

This is a comic book that at first glance looks like a biography of baseball great Satchel Paige. However, it's actually a fictional story of an African American man who encounters Satchel Paige twice in his life–once as a promising young ball player who gets a hit off of a Satchel Paige pitch, and later in life as a father who has been beaten down by a life of discrimination and racism. The illustrations and captions are simple, but they capture the action of the baseball games well. Through the eyes of the narrator you understand the humiliations that build up over years of living with Jim Crow laws and you see the personality and showmanship of Satchel Paige. Factual information in the introduction and at the end of the book helps put the story in historical context. A great book for baseball lovers!