
What Else But Home
Seven Boys and an American Journey Between the Projects and the Penthouse
2009
First Published
3.32
Average Rating
384
Number of Pages
Michael Rosen's seven-year-old son Ripton one day decided to join a pick-up game of baseball with some older kids in the park. At the end of the game Ripton asked his new friends if they wanted to come back to his house for snacks and Nintendo. Over time, five of the boys—all black and Hispanic, from the impoverished neighborhood across the park—became a fixture in the Rosens' home and eventually started referring to Michael and his wife Leslie as their parents. The boys began to see the Rosens as more than just an arcade of middle-class creature comforts; the Rosens began to learn the full stories of the boys' fractured lives. Soon Michael and Leslie decided that their responsibility, like that of parents everywhere, was to help all their boys get a start in life. So began a turbulent learning experience all round, beautifully and movingly depicted in What Else But Home . It's a quest to escape the previously inevitable, a test of the resilience of a newly assembled family, a love story unlike any other, and a celebration of the fact that, whatever our differences, baseball and commitment can help us bridge them.
Avg Rating
3.32
Number of Ratings
57
5 STARS
12%
4 STARS
30%
3 STARS
40%
2 STARS
12%
1 STARS
5%
goodreads
Author

Michael Rosen
Author · 100 books
Michael Rosen, a recent British Children’s Laureate, has written many acclaimed books for children, including WE'RE GOING ON A BEAR HUNT, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, and I’M NUMBER ONE and THIS IS OUR HOUSE, both illustrated by Bob Graham. Michael Rosen lives in London. Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.