With nearly 80,000 copies sold, its series soccer planet, hockey planet et snowboarding planet are among the favorites of young Quebec athletes and readers. The author François Bérubé now invites us to fly away for the baseball planet !
How do you choose sports for your book series?
It’s a decision that is made with my publishing house. Personally, I have an attraction for baseball, because when I was young, it was one of the sports I practiced. I was even responsible for regional baseball scorers in Bas-Saint-Laurent! In addition to being a sport that I enjoy, baseball is growing in popularity in Rimouski, where I still live.
You do a lot of match descriptions in your novels. It must require a lot of research?
My readers are passionate, so I try to “give” them so that they find themselves in the action. I try to be as faithful as possible to what can happen on the ground. It means a lot of research, a lot of videos to watch and dissect. Describe matches for a story, try to put images into words; its not always easy !
Your novels are selling well. What makes this the winning formula for a perfect match with young readers?
Many young people are interested in sports. After discovering my series through their favorite sport, readers may be tempted to discover another of my “planets”, even if they are less familiar with this sport, simply because they liked my story. Each of my series presents as main character a little guy who is passionate about his sport and whom we follow in the practice of his sport, but also in his friendships, at school and in his family life.
Show us your baseball planet.
My children, Eliot and Léa-Jade, harassed me to be in the story (laughs)! However, I didn’t want them to be the main characters. Then I had a flash: my first child, Charles-Antoine, died and I wanted him to be the main character… Eliot and Léa-Jade therefore became twins, brother and sister by Charles Antoine. A beautiful family trio who plays baseball! In the story, they manage to be part of the same team. We therefore follow them in the evolution of the beginning of their baseball season. Through this, I wanted to address mental health issues. The mother of the three children is absent from the first volume, but we learn to discover quietly what she is going through…
With the game descriptions you do in your novels, do you believe you were a sportscaster in another life?
(Laughs) When I was young, I read The Journal of Quebec and I always started with the sports section. Then I discovered the televised sports bulletins. It has always fascinated me, sports journalism. I was perhaps destined to be a sports commentator and I missed my vocation!
