They actually can be...to a point.
You do need to have some interest in baseball history, or these books will be as dry as dust for you.
Dan Gutman created a series of 12 books that all (I assume) revolve around a fictitious boy named Joey. The baseball players that Joey meets are definitely historical figures.
The adventurous part comes in that Joey has the magical ability to travel through time and space to where each of these players lives. He can do this simply by holding a baseball card of a player who lived before the 1960s or so.
Each book title includes a player's name (or nickname) and ends with "& Me". These are the players included in the books.
- Honus
- Jackie
- Babe
- Shoeless Joe
- Mickey
- Abner
- Satch
- Jim
- Ray
- Roberto
- Ted
- Willie
Even if you don't care all that much for baseball, you can probably recognize and fully name at least 10 of those players.
Now you're probably wondering how Joey gets a baseball card of each of those players. A Honus Wagner card can be worth half a million dollars.
Well, that's part of the adventure, so I won't tell you here.
At the end of the Honus book, Joey acquires a Babe card. So you'd think that Babe would be the subject of the second book. As you can see from the list above, it isn't. That's just a little confusing to someone who reads them in order.
I read the Honus, Babe, and Mickey books. Mickey's last name is not Mantle. Her last name is Maguire, and she played on the Milwaukee Chicks. The Chicks home field is now occupied by a section of I-43. Really.
Obviously Gutman has to include some fiction in these books. Fortunately, he tells you in a "chapter" at the end of each book just what was real and what wasn't. That might actually be the first thing you should read, at least in some books or for some readers.
These books do include lots of factual information based on Gutman's research that would be good for children (or adults!) to know if they are even marginally interested in baseball or history in general. And that, of course, is really the point of the whole series: Learn your (baseball) history...or you'll be doomed to repeat it?
