The Best Bat Page 5

  I get little bumps and bruises all the time, Rhino thought. They never slow me down.

  Ryan Howard is a Major League Baseball first baseman. He won the National League Rookie of the Year award in 2005 and the National League MVP award in 2006. Ryan and his wife, Krystle, cofounded the Ryan Howard Big Piece Foundation, which is dedicated to improving the lives of children by promoting academic and athletic development.

  Krystle Howard is a former elementary school teacher with a passion for education and childhood literacy. She was instrumental in developing Ryan’s Reading Challenge, a program that resulted in more than one million minutes of reading by the children involved. She is currently the COO of the Ryan Howard Big Piece Foundation.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Ryan Howard

  Illustrations © 2015 by Scholastic Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published by Scholastic Inc., Publishers since 1920. SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  First printing 2015

  Cover art © 2015 by Erwin Madrid

  Cover design by Christopher Stengel

  e-ISBN 978-0-545-75593-1

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