Review Detail

Oscar Indigo is a bad baseball player, but he’s a very good teammate. And he’s committed to his role of benchwarmer and cheerleader as his team, the East Mt. Etna Wildcats, heads into the Slugger League post season against the West Mt. Etna Yankees. They’re in the first game of a three-game series, and the Wildcats actually have a chance to win, when Oscar accidentally injures the star player, Lourdes Mangubat. Thanks to vacations, Oscar is the only player available to fill in at the plate, and the game rests on Oscar’s reluctant shoulders.

Fortunately, Oscar has recently been given a pocket watch that can stop time, and he chooses to use that watch to hit a home run and win the game for his team. Unfortunately, there are other, negative consequences to the stopping of time, and it ends up that Oscar has broken the universe—and it’s up to him to put it back together again before the world comes to an end as a result.

HOW OSCAR INDIGO BROKE THE UNIVERSE (AND PUT IT BACK TOGETHER AGAIN) is sometimes sweet, sometimes funny, and full of action. Author David Teague has created an incredibly likeable main character in Oscar Indigo, and I was rooting for Oscar—and the rest of his team—from page 1. The other characters in the book are less carefully defined, but Oscar is such a big personality that he manages to carry the book pretty well on his own. Another positive is Teague’s willingness to make female baseball players stars of their teams, and I especially liked the lack of comment on gender from the girls’ teammates.

Some of the humor in the book was definite “dad humor,” so I wonder how appealing that will be to 8-12 year olds, but the themes of friendship, honesty, and fair play are what make this story shine, so a few flat jokes don’t make it any less a good read. There are also some inconsistencies in the narrative; however, I was reading from an ARC, so I’m sure they’ll be cleaned up in the final draft.

OSCAR INDIGO is a good book, and I was happy to have the opportunity to read it. My thanks to YA Books Central and the publisher for providing me a copy of the book in exchange for my honest review.