Hi guys! Let me introduce myself. My name is Roger Raintree and I live in Middleton which is in the middle of America, in the middle of the suburbs just outside of St. Louis. My favorite things are baseball, good friends and now that I’m in the seventh grade–girls? The cover picture is one of my favorite places on earth, Busch Stadium, where the grass is almost always perfect and just the right shade of green. It’s where my favorite team, the St. Louis Cardinals, play. I love baseball but don’t get me wrong, I love other sports too. I don’t want you to think that this book is all about baseball because it’s not. Well…one chapter is but that’s the only one. It’s really about the stuff that happens to a normal kid like me in seventh grade. Sometimes, things can be real unexpected like the time a creepy guy follows me and it turns out he is later arrested for murder. The name of the book is Roger Raintree’s Seventh Grade Blues, (if you remember, that’s me.) The blues thing is because sometimes weird stuff happens and also because we live in St. Louis. This city is home of the blues (for you guys who don’t know, blues is a type of jazz, which was rock n’ roll before there was rock n’ roll.) This book started out as a short story about the time I ran away but then I just kept writing about the whole school year. It was kinda fun, but also a whole lot more work than I thought. It sure helped my English grade, but that’s a whole other story. So, I guess you have to read the book. I run into quite a few adventures and even some girl stuff. I’d tell you more, but then you wouldn’t read the book and I would kinda like you to read it. I hope you like it.