Book Tour: The Ghost, the Eggheads, and Babe Ruth's Piano by Larry Sweitzer

Larry Sweitzer knows how to motivate boys to read, write about exactly what interests them! "The Ghost, the Eggheads, and Babe Ruth's Piano" encompasses it all "geeky", Egghead intellect, ghostly mysteries, camp wilderness, pranks and sports, and of course a few cute girls! This book definitely appealed to my nine year old son Gabriel who ate this book in two good helpings over two consecutive evenings the moment it arrived in the mail! He loved it!

Sweitzer's book tells the tale of an infatuated young teen Freddie Holtzman eager to relive his previous year's camp experience by rekindling a relationship with the girl he had kissed during a rousing game of Truth or Dare. Attending a gifted camp filled with "Eggheads" all vying for a $1000 scholarship, Freddie's hopes for winning a girl's affections seem to be failing and a camp of friends may also include a nemesis or two. Worse still Camp Mason may be haunted by the unsettled ghost of young Billy Mason who dies under mysterious circumstances decades ago.

Filled with pranks and humourous situations, mystery and suspense, and a mild dose of adolescent hormones "The Ghost, the Eggheads, and Babe Ruth's Piano" provides fun filled camp excitement to preteen readers in a well-crafted tale.

My son laughed as he related scenes of a flag football style frisbee game that resulted in someone losing their pants and undies, a truth or dare game involving a sleeping bag {yikes!!}, and his favourite part by far, he declared, the solution to the mystery of Billy Mason's death!

It is a tale of an emerging talent by an emerging talent! As Freddie's dad relates in his baseball wisdom,"The beauty of baseball is that the individual players can still shine even though the game is a true team sport...The point is, the guys at the bottomof the lineup have the same opportunity to be the hero as the big stars, the marquee players." "This would-be goat becomes a hero." (Sweitzer 2009: 71) Larry Sweitzer, now living in Virginia with his wife and two daughters, was born in western Maryland and grew up in a small town where baseball was a way of life!

Will Freddie emerge a hero or a goat? Will he win the $1000 science fair prize? Will he win the affections of the girl he's been dreaming about for an entire year? Will he and his friends survive the ghost of Camp Mason and the science projects gone missing?

Find out by reading this smartly written children's novel, "The Ghost, the Eggheads, and Babe Ruth's Piano" released this past November by iUniverse! Visit Larry Sweitzer's website!