I begin this column with a disclaimer: I don’t read a lot of fantasy.

This is important to note because this column is about a book I recently read, “Summerland,” Pulitzer Prize winning writer Michael Chabon’s latest novel. “Summerland” is 500 pages of unadulterated fantasy.

The reason I don’t read a lot of fantasy is because, well, I don’t typically enjoy it. I live on a steady diet of nonfiction because while reading nonfiction I feel smarter. My change-up is historical fiction. Fantasy to me is usually as appealing as a pitch in the dirt.

Yet I felt compelled to check out “Summerland” if nothing else to discover what all the fuss is about. “Summerland” has been a huge seller for months. Marketed as a book for young adults, the novel also has been appealing to older audiences in large numbers. Of course, the story very much involves the game of baseball and so I was tempted for that reason as well. I know a lot of baseball readers stick only to biographies, oral histories and stats books. I try to keep up with baseball fiction and this book certainly fits into that genre.

My first thought about the novel is that it is "Harry Potter” in “Field of Dreams.” I never caught on to the Potter craze (I am also missing the current Tolkien frenzy) and I don’t plan to jump aboard anytime soon. If you did, though, or if you merely like the idea of a world that is centered on baseball — I’ve heard worse concepts — then this winter you may want to visit “Summerland.” I gave it three out of five stars, but that rating deserves an asterisk more than Roger Maris’ 61-homer season of 1961. If you are more inclined toward fantasy than I am you may very well find much to enjoy about "Summerland,” which is about magical parallel worlds, the legend of baseball, and a boy's journey to save the universe.

Ethan Feld has never been prone to adventure or attention, especially since he's often ridiculed about his baseball skills (Feld is the kid on the end of bench who fields insults more often than grounders). But after he awakens one day to find something called a werefox sitting on his chest, Feld learns he's been pegged for a journey to the Summerlands — part of a connected, hidden world, where small American Indian-like ferishers play ball, and an evil Coyote tries to destroy the universe. Feld agrees to the monumental task, and when his father is kidnapped by one of Coyote’s minions, the mission becomes personal.

With a team of ragtag players called Big Chief Cinquefoil's Traveling Shadowtails All-Star Baseball, which includes pitcher Jennifer T., Thor Wignutt (a boy who's part something else), a Sasquatch named Taffy, and the major league hitting star — Ethan treks through the Summerlands playing against creatures and an impending time limit, hoping to reach his dad. Eventually, his abilities will be tested in a game that gives new meaning to the term World Series.

Chabon either has a solid grasp of baseball history or spent a lot time with “Total Baseball” before writing this novel. Baseball fans will recognize baseball names and familiar stories throughout. For example, one character who helps Feld is a man named “Ring finger” Brown. In “Summerland,” Brown is a former Negro League player, not a former Chicago Cub (“Three finger” Brown) who suffered a farming accident.

There were several passages in the novel that kept me reading and made me want to give the book to a young person. For example, early on, Feld’s father explains to his son about he nature of baseball after Feld questions why errors are listed in a baseball line score. “Errors … well, they are a part of life, Ethan,” he says, “Fouls and penalties, generally speaking, are not. That’s why baseball is more like life than other games. Sometimes I feel like that’s all I do in life, keep track of errors.”

Another character later says, “A baseball game is nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.”

The last one I’ll mention: “Life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters we’re put out 70 percent of the time.”

I don’t have children, but if I did I’d at least start reading this novel with them and see if it hit a home run. It is obvious it was written with young readers in mind. Yet it is neither the reading level nor the story that keeps me from giving it a full endorsement, but rather my own interest in the fantasy genre.

Escapism has its purpose and fantasy is likely the ultimate reading escape. I just don’t need every aspect of a story needs to be created from thin air in order to feel a sense that I am taking a break from life. Just about any baseball book turns that trick for me.