But his true success came in 1954 with the publication of "The Lucky Baseball Bat". "I decided to write a baseball book for children", said Christopher. "I was living in Syracuse, New York at the time, working at General Electric. I spoke about my idea to the branch librarian. She was immediately interested and told me that they needed sports stories badly." His conversation with the librarian, along with a rejection letter from a publisher (who recommended that Christopher concentrate on writing stories for kids since he seemed to "have a talent for writing about children"), inspired Christopher to sit down over Thanksgiving in 1952 and write "The Lucky Baseball Bat", whose publication by Little, Brown, and Company earned him $250 net. Thanks to that success he continued writing and his second children's sports novel, "Baseball Pals", was published in 1956. Both those first two books were about 120 pages long and were published by Little, Brown with illustrations by Robert Henneberger.