In Pablo Learns Patience and Pickleball, an excitable little boy is taught to slow down in order to learn a new game.
One day, Pablo’s parents try to teach him to play pickleball. Pablo, a young boy who can’t hold still, talks a mile a minute, guessing how the game might be played and what equipment might be used. He dashes around the house gathering various hats and balls, and imagines who he’ll challenge to the new game. At each step, his parents ask for patience.
Eventually, the family goes to a court, and Pablo learns all the rules of pickleball, asking many questions along the way but learning to wait for the answers. Ultimately, he has a great time playing pickleball and even teases his father about patience when a volley doesn’t go his dad’s way.
A sweet story with plenty of sports vocabulary, this book (like others in its series) is presented in English on the left-hand page and Spanish on the opposing right-hand page. By directly translating the narrative, the author gives readers the chance to learn through comparison (although the text is rather dense to allow for word-to-word comparison). An index at the back of the book supports translation. Simple line drawings depict Pablo in his exploits and also serve as diagrams for how to play pickleball.
Readers will root for Pablo to learn patience—not least because his many interruptions slow the narrative and may become as annoying to readers as they are to his parents. The story could have used fewer of these, given that the straightforward plot is stretched across so much text. Additionally, the explanation of pickleball is far too in-depth.
Despite getting bogged down in its own concept, Pablo Learns Patience and Pickleball makes a valiant effort at teaching both life lessons and a niche game—all in a bilingual fashion.
Also available in hardcover and ebook.
