“We’re going to get there someday,” Dave said in the darkness, as if he were reading his friend’s mind. “You watch.”
“We will,” Derek agreed. “But you know what? Nobody gets there alone.”
Jeter Publishing’s fifth book in The Contract series is inspired by the childhood of Derek Jeter, who grew up playing baseball. The middle-grade series is based on the principles of Jeter’s Turn 2 Foundation.
Jeter Publishing encompasses adult nonfiction, children’s picture books, middle-grade fiction, ready-to-read children’s books, and children’s nonfiction.
About the Authors
DEREK JETER played Major League Baseball for the New York Yankees for twenty seasons and is a five-time World Series champion. He is a true legend in professional sports and a role model for young people on and off the field and through his work in the community with his Turn 2 Foundation. For more information, visit Turn2Foundation.org.
Derek was born in New Jersey and moved to Kalamazoo, Michigan, when he was four. There he often attended Detroit Tigers games with his family, but the New York Yankees were always his favorite team, and he never stopped dreaming of playing for them.
PAUL MANTELL is the author of more than one hundred books for young readers.
Learn more about Jeter Publishing at JeterPublishing.com
Visit us at simonandschuster.com/kids
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Derek-Jeter
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Paul-Mantell
Jeter Publishing
Simon & Schuster, New York
ALSO BY DEREK JETER
The Contract
Hit & Miss
Change Up
Fair Ball
Baseball Genius
Double Play
SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2018 by Jeter Publishing, Inc.
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Book design by Krista Vossen
The text for this book was set in Centennial LT Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jeter, Derek, 1974– author. | Mantell, Paul, author.
Title: Curveball / Derek Jeter with Paul Mantell.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young
Readers, [2018] | “Jeter Children’s.” | Summary: While spending the
summer with his extended family in New Jersey, Derek finds a team he can play
baseball with and earns money to take his best friend to a Yankees game.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017035621| ISBN 9781534409897 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781534409910 (eBook)
Subjects: LCSH: Jeter, Derek, 1974– —Childhood and youth—Juvenile fiction. |
CYAC: Jeter, Derek, 1974– —Childhood and youth—Fiction. |
Baseball—Fiction. | Grandparents—Fiction. | Family life—New
Jersey—Fiction. | New York Yankees (Baseball team)—Fiction. | New
Jersey—History—20th century—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Sports & Recreation / Baseball & Softball. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues /
Friendship. | JUVENILE FICTION / Social Issues / Values & Virtues.
Classification: LCC PZ7.J55319 Cur 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017035621