“Step Up to the Plate” for a chance to win an expenses-paid trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York.

Presented locally by the Grand Rapids Area Library, together with the Baseball Hall of Fame and the American Library Association, the contest was created to bring together two of America’s favorite pastimes -- baseball and reading.

“I think it’s going to be a fun program this summer. It’s a chance for kids to read something that they want to read, instead of what they have to read for school, and they can enter a contest,” said Marcia Anderson. Anderson is the Assistant Director of the Grand Rapids library. She read about the contest in an American Library Association newsletter, thought it “sounded like a lot of fun,” and initiated it locally.

Here’s how it works: Kids and teens ages 9-18 pick out a baseball-themed book (fiction or non-fiction) from their school library or local library. They pick their favorite character from the book, a......