“‘Errors…Well, they are a part of life, Ethan,’ he tried to explain. ‘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 my errors.’”

Ethan’s dad says this to Ethan after he expresses his dislike of how baseball keeps track of his mistakes. These lines offer important context to both Ethan and his dad. For Ethan, they reveal his struggles with self-esteem and set up for his internal journey as he navigates baseball in the Summerlands and realizes that he’s more than the mistakes he makes. For Ethan’s dad, they explain why he later continues to help Coyote even after Coyote dismisses him. Ethan’s dad gives his mistakes too much control, which causes him to keep working in an effort to correct them all, even though it isn’t possible to do so.

“Oracles were tricky, as Ethan knew from his reading of mythology. Often they answered the question you ought to have asked, or the one you didn’t realize you were even asking. Ethan wondered what question he himself would pose to an oracular clam, given a chance.”

As Ethan watches the faeries consult the clam prophet about the conflict against Coyote, his thoughts establish the mythologies from which Summerland draws. The clam references well-known oracles such as the Greek one at Delphi. Ethan’s thought that prophecy is tricky foreshadows his realization that the prophecy here isn’t actually about him, which makes this moment critical for Ethan as he looks back on this mistake as