Tryouts

by Sarah Sax

In Sarah Sax’s graphic novel Tryouts, Al brings her love of baseball and her determination to the competitive world of Brinkley Middle School athletics. As she pursues a place on a team traditionally associated with boys, she navigates assumptions about who belongs, the pressure to prove herself, and the difference between individual achievement and genuine teamwork.

Big Idea

Belonging should not depend on fitting someone else’s expectations. Through Al’s baseball experiences, readers can explore how fairness, confidence, and supportive teamwork help people challenge limiting assumptions.

Discussion Questions

1.What does baseball mean to Al beyond winning games? Which words, actions, or illustrations support your interpretation?
2.When does Al face a challenge related to baseball skills, and when does she face a challenge related to other people’s expectations? How can you tell the difference?
3.How do the actions of teammates and adults affect Al’s sense of belonging? Choose an interaction and explain what makes it supportive, discouraging, or complicated.
4.Where do Sax’s pictures communicate something that the dialogue does not say directly? How does that change your understanding of a character?
5.What does Tryouts suggest makes someone a good teammate? How might that definition apply to a classroom, club, or other group?

Lesson Plan

⏱ 45 minutes📦 Copies of Tryouts or a legally displayed teacher-selected excerpt, paper, pencils, erasers, rulers, optional comic-panel templates, colored pencils or crayons, and sticky notes.

Learning Goals

Support an interpretation of Al’s experiences with evidence from both words and illustrations.
Explain how panel sequence, visual detail, and dialogue affect a graphic novel’s pacing.
Create two coherent comic sequences that deliberately use different pacing techniques.
Show a character’s feelings about belonging through actions, expressions, and dialogue.
Give specific peer feedback using the vocabulary of comics and pacing.

Activity Steps

1.Notice and discuss—8 minutes: Read a teacher-selected baseball sequence from Tryouts. Identify what happens, what Al might be feeling, and which visual or verbal details support those inferences.
2.Map the timing—7 minutes: Track the sequence panel by panel. Mark places that feel fast or slow, and discuss how actions, dialogue, expressions, and panel transitions contribute to that effect.
3.Plan one moment—5 minutes: Students invent a brief baseball situation inspired by the book, such as waiting for a turn at tryouts or responding to a teammate’s doubt. Identify the external action and the character’s internal concern.
4.Draw two versions—15 minutes: Create a fast version in three panels and a slower version in six panels. Keep the central event the same, but change the number of action beats, reaction shots, details, or pauses.
5.Read and revise—7 minutes: Partners read both versions and identify where the pace changes and what they learn about the character. Each creator revises one panel based on the feedback.
6.Reflect—3 minutes: Students complete the statement, ‘I slowed down or sped up this moment by ___ so that readers would ___.’ Connect the choice to a technique observed in Sax’s work.

Standards Connections

ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.7 — Explain how illustrations contribute to aspects of a story; use Al’s expressions and baseball action as evidence.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7 — Analyze how visual elements contribute to meaning, tone, or beauty in a text; examine Sax’s panel sequences.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.3–W.7.3 — Grade-appropriate narrative writing using effective sequencing, descriptive details, and dialogue.
ELA: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.1–SL.7.1 — Grade-appropriate collaborative discussion, including building on others’ ideas and supporting interpretations.
SEL and visual arts: Social awareness, relationship skills, and visual storytelling — Examine assumptions about belonging and communicate emotion through sequential images.

Pace-Write-Read Study with Pace-Write It!

Sarah Sax’s Tryouts makes pacing visible. Baseball naturally alternates between anticipation and action: a player waits, watches, makes a decision, and moves. In a graphic novel, those moments can occupy very different amounts of page space. Readers can investigate how Sax distributes attention among athletic movement, dialogue, and reactions, then consider why an emotionally important instant might deserve more reading time than a longer stretch of routine activity. The book also offers a useful distinction between external and internal action. Al’s baseball goals move the plot forward, while her encounters with expectations about who belongs give those events emotional weight. In this Pace-Write-Read study, students notice a craft choice, write or draw an experiment using it, and read their work aloud or exchange it with a partner. The goal is not simply to make a story faster: it is to help readers spend time on what matters. Use selected pages as evidence, and treat devices such as flashbacks, poetic language, or recurring groups of three as possibilities to investigate rather than features to assume are present.

Element	How to notice or teach it in the novel
1. Pacing	Compare a baseball-action sequence with a conversation about Al’s place on the team. Ask how the number of panels, amount of dialogue, and attention to reactions influence the speed of reading.
2. Plot	Trace Al’s baseball goal, the obstacles she encounters, and the choices she makes in response. Distinguish events that merely happen next from events that cause a meaningful change.
3. Prosody	Read a short exchange aloud, using balloon shape, punctuation, facial expressions, and lettering as clues to emphasis and pauses. Compare two readings and discuss which better fits the illustrated interaction.
4. Word	Choose a word from a baseball scene or an exchange involving Al and consider why it is effective in a small speech balloon. Try a replacement and evaluate how it changes tone, precision, or reading time.
5. Concept	Frame the central concept as a skilled young player seeking a fair chance in a space shaped by gender expectations. Ask how this concept creates both athletic and social stakes.
6. Voice & Worldview	Examine how Al speaks and responds when her abilities or belonging are at issue. Discuss what those choices suggest about what she values, separating evidence from readers’ assumptions.
7. Point of View	Notice whose expressions and reactions receive attention during a tense exchange. Discuss how that visual focus brings readers close to Al’s experience without necessarily revealing every character’s thoughts.
8. Setting & Place	Compare the baseball environment with a school setting in the book. Identify how each place changes what Al is expected to do, how she interacts with others, and what is at stake.
9. Original Characters	Identify combinations of goals, habits, expressions, and choices that make Al more than a generic athlete. Have students give an invented teammate a desire that extends beyond winning.
10. Dialogue	Study a conversation that affects Al’s confidence or sense of inclusion. Ask what the speakers say directly and what their expressions or actions suggest beneath the words.
11. Details	Find a small detail in a baseball panel, such as a character’s grip, stance, or direction of gaze, and explain what it contributes. Discuss why a storyteller might give that detail its own panel.
12. Descriptions	Translate one illustrated setting or character reaction into two descriptive prose sentences. Compare the reading experience with Sax’s visual version and identify what the image communicates simultaneously.
13. Firsts	Locate the first time readers encounter Al in a baseball context. Examine which information Sax supplies immediately and which questions remain open.
14. Immediacy & Engagement	Find a moment when readers must quickly work out what Al will do next. Identify the combination of visible action, clear stakes, and unanswered questions that draws readers into the moment.
15. Story Scenes, Summaries & Structures	Compare an event shown through several panels with a transition that moves readers onward more briefly. Discuss why Al’s story benefits from dramatizing some experiences while compressing others.
16. Tension / Suspense / Surprise	Distinguish suspense about athletic outcomes from tension about how Al will be treated. Find a sequence in which uncertainty about a response matters as much as uncertainty about a play.
17. Flashback, Flash-Forward, Cliffhanger	Check selected transitions for a shift in time or an unresolved action; do not assume all three devices occur. As a writing extension, imagine how a brief memory or a withheld result could alter the pacing of an Al-inspired tryout scene.
18. Page Turns and Chapter Breaks	Examine what readers know at the bottom of a page and what they discover after turning it. Discuss whether a selected transition delays an outcome, changes location, or offers a moment to reset.
19. Pace & Creativity	Use one baseball action from a selected sequence as a model, then redraw an invented equivalent in two panels and six panels. Compare how expanding time creates room for uncertainty, observation, or emotion.
20. Play	Discuss the difference between enjoying baseball and feeling required to prove oneself through it. Invite students to identify how playful experimentation in their own comics can communicate that contrast.
21. Performance	Explore how playing a sport while others watch can affect Al’s choices and feelings. Perform a short exchange twice, changing posture and pauses to show confidence in one version and pressure in the other.
22. Personality	Track a recurring way Al reacts to difficulty and support the observation with more than one moment. Discuss how consistent reactions establish personality while changed reactions can reveal growth.
23. Humor	Invite students to locate a moment they find funny and identify whether the humor comes from wording, expression, contrast, or timing. Consider how a lighter beat changes the experience of the surrounding pressure.
24. Pause	Look for a panel in which little outward action occurs but a character’s reaction matters. Explain how lingering on Al’s face or another character’s response can make readers consider the emotional consequences of an exchange.
25. Poetry / Poetic Devices	Check a selected passage for sound play, figurative language, or repeated visual imagery without assuming the book uses verse. Students can write a brief metaphor for Al’s experience and decide whether words or an image would communicate it more effectively.
26. Repetition	Look for recurring baseball actions, words, or visual situations across the book. Ask whether a later repetition reinforces the earlier meaning or reveals that Al’s circumstances have changed.
27. Rhythm	Tap a beat for each panel in a selected sequence, allowing longer beats for panels that require more attention. Compare the resulting pattern with the alternation of waiting and movement in baseball.
28. Punctuation	Examine punctuation in a tense or energetic exchange and read it aloud. Rewrite one balloon with different punctuation to test how urgency, uncertainty, or hesitation changes.
29. Questions	Separate questions characters ask aloud from questions readers carry, such as whether Al will receive a fair chance. Track when one question is answered and another begins to sustain interest.
30. Compare-Contrast	Compare Al’s view of her baseball abilities with the way another character responds to her. Use dialogue and pictures to distinguish a difference in perspective from a difference in demonstrated skill.
31. Objects	Choose a visible baseball object, such as a bat, ball, or glove, and examine its practical role in a scene. Then consider whether its placement or handling also communicates readiness, tension, or connection.
32. Threes	Check whether a selected sequence groups actions or reactions into three beats; treat this as an investigation rather than an assumed pattern. Students can test a three-beat version of an invented moment: prepare, act, react.
33. Lists	Create an evidence-based list of the pressures Al faces and sort them into athletic, interpersonal, and institutional challenges. Use the list to plan a scene, then choose which single pressure deserves the most page space.
34. White Space & Negative Space	Examine the gutters between panels and open areas within selected images. Discuss how readers infer missing movement between panels and how an uncluttered image can focus attention on a reaction.
35. Art & Graphics	Study how Sax combines character design, expressions, framing, and lettering to make baseball action and social interactions readable. Ask what important meaning would disappear if the pictures were removed.
36. Interactives & Gamification	Use a teacher-created prediction pause before revealing the outcome of a selected sequence. Students justify predictions with visual evidence and then revise their thinking; this is a classroom strategy, not a claim that the book contains game features.
37. Placement	Trace how balloon placement, character position, and panel arrangement guide the eye across a page. Discuss how the order in which readers encounter a statement and a reaction affects meaning.
38. Form	Explain why the graphic-novel form suits a story combining fast physical movement with subtle social pressure. Convert a short sequence into prose and compare what each form makes easy to convey.
39. Dummy	Explain that a dummy is a rough page-by-page book mock-up, not a polished final copy. Students fold scrap paper into a miniature comic and plan where an Al-inspired baseball action, emotional pause, and page-turn reveal will go.
40. Passion	Identify evidence that baseball matters deeply to Al, rather than assuming that participation alone proves passion. Invite students to use a similarly meaningful interest as the center of their own story about persistence or belonging.

Pace-Write It!

20-minute Pace-Write-It! task: The Moment Before the Play. Minutes 0–4: Revisit a short baseball sequence in Tryouts and identify how Sax balances physical action with a character’s reaction. Minutes 4–6: Plan an original, clearly labeled imagined scene inspired by Al’s situation: a player waits for a chance to contribute while feeling pressure to prove they belong. Minutes 6–13: Draw a six-panel comic—two panels establishing the situation, three stretching the moment before the action, and one showing the action or its immediate result. Include one wordless reaction panel and no more than three speech balloons so the images carry substantial meaning. Minutes 13–17: Exchange comics; readers mark where they slowed down and explain what they inferred about the player’s feelings. Minutes 17–20: Revise one panel and add a craft note naming a technique observed in Tryouts and explaining how it shaped the new comic. For younger students, provide panel templates and oral rehearsal; for older students, ask them to explain how the ending supports or complicates the character’s sense of belonging.

Classroom Activities

One Play, Two Paces

Students study how Sax uses panels, dialogue, body language, and visual pauses to shape a baseball moment. They then create two short comics showing the same fictional moment inspired by Al’s experiences: one version moves quickly through an athletic action, while the other slows down to reveal the player’s feelings about pressure, fairness, or belonging. Partners compare how the pacing changes their understanding of the character.

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