The Pinballs

The Pinballs is a 1976 middle grade realistic novel by Betsy Byars. Byars is an acclaimed author of middle grade fiction. Between 1962 and 2010, she wrote more than 60 books for young people. Byars’s books have won prestigious awards, such as the Newbery Medal and the National Book Award. She was born in 1928 and given the name Betsy Cromer. She grew up in North Carolina during the Great Depression and graduated Queen’s College with a B.A. in English in 1950. She and Edward Ford Byars, whom she married in 1950, had four children. Two of their daughters, Betsy Ann and Laurie, would become co-authors with Betsy on four books between 2000 and 2010. She passed on February 26, 2020, at the age of 91.

Like many of Byars’s books, The Pinballs follows a small group of adolescents as they navigate personal struggles and adverse circumstances. Carlie, Harvey, and Thomas J are all placed into the Masons’ foster home together due to abuse and neglect they face at home. There, they must work through how the trauma of their past affects their thoughts and behavior. The novel deals openly with various types of domestic child abuse and its effects on the children who experience it.