The Aurora County All-Stars (Unabridged)

Twelve-year-old House Jackson, star pitcher and team captain of the Aurora County All-Stars, has been sidelined for a whole sorry year with a broken elbow. He's finally ready to play - but wouldn't you know, the team's only game of the year has been scheduled for the exact same time as the town's 200th-anniversary pageant. Now House must face the pageant's director, full-of-herself Frances Shotz (his nemesis and perpetrator of the elbow break), and get his team out of this mess. There's also the matter of a mysterious old recluse who has died and left House a wheezy old dog named Eudora Welty and a puzzling book of poetry by someone named Walt Whitman.