mores and values, rules and politics, and their own moral development," and Roger Leslie commented in Booklist that Over the Wall is a "fully fleshed-out story about compassion and absolution." After publishing two completely different books in time and place, Ritter began to be noticed for his ability to switch writing style and voice at will. His editor at Philomel, Michael Green, told writer Kelly Milner Halls, in an interview on authorial voice for the 2002 Edition of Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market, that when it comes to voice, "John is a true chameleon." In the wake of Over the Wall, with its strong anti-war theme, Ritter viewed America's response to the 9/11/2001 events with increasing dismay. Writing in the September 2002 volume of the California English Journal, Ritter stated, "The strain of this past year has been tough on me. After witnessing for days the grand, immediate outpouring of selflessness, generosity, and sacrifice in lower Manhattan—the ‘small friendly town of New York City’ that I celebrated in my recent novel, Over the Wall—I now sit in a blue funk, disappointed in our nation's response and the public outcry for further military retaliation. Discouraged might be a better word. I mean, why do I even bother to write books about empathy and reaching out to others, why do our teachers bother to offer lessons on the same thing, when in crisis, we hunker in survivor mode under a blanket of ethnocentrism, fear, and nationalistic fervor? Seems to me that these were the precise sentiments that drove the hijackers." The Boy Who Saved Baseball Ritter finally met with widespread recognition in 2003 with his third novel, The Boy Who Saved Baseball. In an admitted attempt to lift his spirits, Ritter took on the U.S. Invasion of Iraq by disguising it as an environmental issue and using a lighter and more humorous vein in a work based loosely on Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Cited in People Magazine as a book to read, "Now that the youngsters have read Harry Potter...", the story centers on Doc Altenheimer, the eccentric octogenarian owner of an apple orchard in Dillontown, California, who is preparing to sell his acres of land—including the town's century-old baseball field—to wealthy outside developers including a banker from Texas in cahoots with a comical and dishonest mayor. After talking with twelve-year-old Tom Gallagher, however, Doc decides to let