This is one of a collection of Raymond & Graham books. In this one, the boys are hoping to win the baseball championship for the year and one of the perks of winning will be beating David, a mean kid who likes to slug Raymond whenever he can. Even though there’s a lot of baseball, it doesn’t feel excessive and a lot of the incidents are pretty funny. A side story, which I thought was quite amusing, was school related. The class was getting a week-long substitute, so they make all sorts of plans to trick the sub. The trick is on them, though, when the sub turns out to be Raymond’s mother, who didn’t tell Raymond in order to surprise him. She’s clueless about how he feels about her being his sub, and some of the scenes, like when she happily joins the table of boys for lunch all week, are laugh-out-loud funny. ( )