Saturday, September 21, 2019

Jackie & Me

Cover of my copy of softbound edition.

I recently picked up another book in Dan Gutman's "Baseball Card Adventure Series." Jackie & Me is about Jackie Robinson. I found a softbound copy (not a paperback) at a recent used book sale. I would have preferred to have the hardback edition but for 50¢ I could not pass up such a deal. 

This is the third book of the series that I have read (but is the second in the series). I previously read about Abner Doubleday and Shoeless Joe (Jackson). They are fun reads that mix fantasy with baseball history.  The book is 145 pages of text with a few extra pages for the Title page, copyright, About the Author, and Jackie Robinson's career statistics.

This edition was published in February 2000 (the hardback was published March 1999). While it is a work of fiction, it loosely covers the historical aspects of the time and is peppered with historical photos (e.g., exterior of Ebbets Field, baseball stadium home of the Brooklyn Dodgers). The final chapter (in each book of the series) is "To The Reader" which clarifies what was fact and what was fiction. In Jackie & Me, the mixture of fact and fiction was something of a challenge due to the discrimination and bigotry that was inflicted on Jackie Robinson.


The back cover presents the summary of the story:
Like every other kid in his class, Joe Stoshack has to write a report on an African American who's made an important contribution to society. Unlike every other kid in his class, Joe has a special talent: with the help of old baseball cards, he can travel through time. So for his report, Joe decides to go back to meet one of the greatest baseball players ever, Jackie Robinson, to find out what it was like to be the man who broke baseball's color barrier. Joe plans on writing a prize-winning report. But he doesn't plan on a trip that will for a short time change the color of his skin - and forever change his view of history and his definition of courage.
Sure, since it's a kids book, it is a bit white-washed but the reader gets the point without having it come down overly strong. During the writing of this post, I realized that this is the 100th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's birth.

I'm looking forward to the next Baseball Card Adventures book that I encounter.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)