Honus & Me: A Baseball Card Adventure (Baseball Card Adventures)
Grade 4-6.  An intriguing time-travel novel. While 12-year-old Joe Stoshack is cleaning out Miss Young's attic for spending money, he finds the world's most valuable baseball card, picturing Honus Wagner. Joe wrestles with the thought of telling Miss Young about his discovery and of returning it to her. But she had instructed him to throw out all the junk in the attic, and he knows the money raised from selling the card would help his single mother. That night, Joe wakes up to see Wagner in his bedroom, and they eventually travel back in time to the 1909 World Series. Gutman includes plenty of factual baseball information in this short novel. An appendix helps readers sort out fact from fantasy. Most young baseball-card collectors will have heard about the famous Honus Wagner cards, one of which was sold in 1991 for almost half-a-million dollars, making the premise of the story familiar. Black-and-white photos of Wagner and the series, although sometimes dark or grainy, add authenticity to the book. An enjoyable escape into another decade.?Blair Christolon, Prince William Library, Manassas, VACopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.