Baseball Card Adventures

Baseball Card Adventures
Paperback edition
AuthorDan Gutman
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Published1997-2015
No. of books12

The Baseball Card Adventures is a novel series written by Dan Gutman.[1] There are 12 books in the series, published by HarperCollins between 1997 and 2015. The books feature a boy, Joe Stoshack, who can travel through time when he touches old baseball cards.[2] When he holds a baseball card, he feels a tingling sensation, and when it gets strong, is transported to the year that card was made and somewhere near the ballplayer on the card. Later he discovers that this power also works on very old photographs. He tries to use this power wisely, and he attempts to change history several times, but the result is always something different from his original goal.

The novels are typically illustrated with black and white photos from the time period in which the story takes place. For example, when Jackie Robinson steals second base in Jackie & Me, a real photograph of Jackie Robinson stealing a base is pictured. Occasionally the books will also be illustrated with pictures taken exclusively for the book.[3]

The Cambridge Companion to Baseball in its review of baseball fiction calls the books "an eclectic enterprise" which "uninhibitedly embraces the genre's cliches."[4] Library Journal called them "good examples" of traditional sports novels.[5]

  1. ^ Gutman, Dan. 'Jim & Me'. 2008, HarperCollins.
  2. ^ Kathleen A. Baxter, Marcia Agness Kochel (2012). Get Those Guys Reading!: Fiction and Series Books that Boys Will Love. ABC-CLIO. pp. 166–167. ISBN 9781598848472.
  3. ^ Gutman, Dan. 'Shoeless Joe & Me'. 2004, HarperCollins.
  4. ^ Leonard Cassuto, Stephen Partridge (2011). The Cambridge Companion to Baseball. Cambridge University Press. p. 30. ISBN 9781139826204.
  5. ^ Crowe, Chris (1 March 2005). "A fan applauds a growing genre of YA sports novels". School Library Journal.