The Magic Marble
Gordon S. Black, Kathy Sedgwick Moran
language
(IndieLitWorld.com, March 21, 2011)
Alfred Jackson is a sad little African-American boy, growing up in the decade after the end of World War II. He is small for his age, with poor vision and glasses, and he has lost his father in the Battle of the Bulge, at Bastogne, an unrecognized hero of the conflict. Alfred is always the last to be picked for any team sports, and some of the older boys bully and tease him, calling him names of racial hatred. He has one talent where he is clearly superior; he is an accomplished marble player, a sport where his size and his glasses do not matter. He wants to enter a city-wide marble tournament, but he is afraid that the bullies will harass him and he will fail. A kind older man who is a neighbor and a friend of Alfred's finds out what is wrong, and he intervenes by giving him his favorite "shooter," a magic marble that will help Allred to win. What happens next is the rest of the story.