Jennifer Bohnhoff
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An interview with Stacy Barnett Mozer

3/30/2016

1 Comment

 
Know any athletic girls, ages 8-14 who want a good role model and a source of inspiration? I urge you to buy them copies of The Sweet Spot, by Stacy Mozer.
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When thirteen-year-old Sam Barrette’s baseball coach tells her that her attitude's holding her back, she wants to hit him in the head with a line drive. Why shouldn’t she have an attitude? As the only girl playing in the 13U league, she’s had to listen to boys and people in the stands screaming things like “Go play softball,” all season, just because she’s a girl. Her coach barely lets her play, even though she’s one of the best hitters on the team.All stakes now rest on Sam’s performance at baseball training camp. But the moment she arrives, miscommunication sets the week up for potential disaster. Placed at the bottom with the weaker players, she will have to work her way up to A league, not just to show Coach that she can be the best team player possible, but to prove to herself that she can hold a bat with the All-Star boys.

Picturephoto courtesy The Greenwich Time
I caught up with author Stacy Mozer recently and got to ask her about The Sweet Spot, her book recently published by Spellbound River Press.

Stacy is a third grade teacher and a mom. She started writing books when a class of students told her that there was no way that a real author who wrote real books could possibly revise their work as much as she asked them to revise. She proved them wrong and has been revising her own work ever since. 


Me: Why does your main character want to play baseball? Why not softball?

Stacy:
Sam plays baseball because I grew up as a Mets fan and a baseball lover. My favorite movie growing up was Blue Skies Again, a story about a girl who gets on to a minor league team. Softball is a great sport, but it isn’t the same as baseball. The pitching is different, the fielding is different. And just because you are good at one sport it, doesn’t mean that you are good at the other. When I was doing research I played around with the idea that Sam was at a camp and forced to play softball so she convinced a bunch of girls to form their own baseball team. The expert that I spoke to said it would never work because when she was in high school she convinced a number of her softball friends to try out for baseball. She was the only one who made the team.

Me: Is Sam’s character based on a real person, a composite of people, or is she completely fictitious?

Stacy:
Sam is a composite of girls I’ve had in my class over the years who have fought their way on the playing field with the boys at recess. She also has some of me in her too. Her snarkiness is definitely me.

Me: Have you got another book in the pipeline?

Stacy: Book 2 will be coming out from Spellbound River this time next year. It’s call The Perfect Trip and it tells the story of the rest of Sam’s summer and new obstacles she will face in her baseball career. 

1 Comment
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8/17/2016 12:56:43 am

Nice one Post.

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    ABout Jennifer Bohnhoff

    I am a former middle school teacher who loves travel and history, so it should come as no surprise that many of my books are middle grade historical novels set in beautiful or interesting places.  But not all of them.  I hope there's one title here that will speak to you personally and deeply.

    What I love most: that "ah hah" moment when a reader suddenly understands the connections between himself, the past, and the world around him.  Those moments are rarified, mountain-top experiences.



    Can't get enough of Jennifer Bohnhoff's blogs?  She's also on Mad About MG History.  

    ​
    Looking for more books for middle grade readers? Greg Pattridge hosts MMGM, where you can find loads of recommendations.

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