John H. Ritter (born October 31, 1951, San Pedro, California) is an American novelist, short story writer, teacher, and lecturer. He has written six novels and numerous short stories spanning the historical, sports, and sociopolitical genres in the young adult field of literature. His first novel, Choosing Up Sides, published in 1998, won the 1999 International Reading Association Children's Book Award for Older Readers and was designated an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. Kirkus Reviews praised Choosing Up Sides, which attacked the once-prevalent views of religious fundamentalists toward left-handed children, as, "No ordinary baseball book, this is a rare first novel." In 2004 Ritter received the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People for his third novel, The Boy Who Saved Baseball. Ritter's novels have tackled subjects as diverse as the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, the complexities of exurban land development, jazz fusion, Billy the Kid, the originations of the racial ban against African Americans in Major League Baseball, and the ascension prophecies of 2012. According to Vicki Sherbert, writing in The ALAN Review for the National Council of Teachers of English, Ritter "uses the game of baseball, the glory of music, and the power of the written word to illustrate how young people can overcome everyday, and not-so-everyday, challenges. Each book goes beyond the story of the game, beyond the story of the problem, right to the heart of Ritter's message: What is really valuable in life?" Early life Born in San Pedro, California, on October 31, 1951, novelist John H. Ritter grew up in the rural hills of eastern San Diego County. His father, Carl W. Ritter, was a sports writer, and later financial editor, for The San Diego Union newspaper. Ritter's mother, Clara, died of breast cancer, when he was four years old. Ritter recalls, "One thing I remember about my mom is that she sang to us constantly, making up a song for each of her four children that fit our personalities perfectly. So from her, I got a sense of how to capture a person's spirit in a lyrical phrase." Writing in Dear Author: Letters of Hope, edited by Joan F. Kaywell, Ritter had this to say about his childhood. "When I was very young, my mother died. And my father, who deeply loved her, fell into a deep depression and began to drink heavily. After being left with four