John Ritter is a young adult author who has written a number of books and short tales. His first novel, Picking Up Sides, was named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults and earned the International Reading Association Children's Book Award for Older Readers in 1999. No ordinary baseball book, this is a remarkable first novel, according to Kirkus Reviews, which praised Picking Up Sides for attacking the once-dominant views of religious extremists against left-handed youth. Ritter's third novel, The Boy Who Saved Baseball, won the Paterson Award for Literature for Young People in 2004.