Stories of time travel have appealed to readers for generations. Self-hypnosis, machines, time warps, and countless other devices have propelled heroes into amazing adventures. Thirteen-year-old Joe Stoshack has a unique method. He can travel back to any time period by holding on to an appropriate antique baseball card. Using this device, he has met Honus Wagner, Jackie Robinson, and Babe Ruth. In this fourth installment in the series, he travels to the year 1919, when America is reeling from the losses of The Great War, and even more so from the influenza epidemic that has killed millions, and when baseball is nearly destroyed as a result of the notorious “Black Sox Scandal.” Our hero “Stosh” overhears notorious gambler Arnold Rothstein and his cronies as they plot with members of the Chicago White Sox to throw the World Series. Shoeless Joe Jackson wants no part of the fix. When one of the players gives him $5,000 “on account” from the gamblers, he tries to give it to team owner Comiskey and warn him of what is to come, but he is not believed. Joe plays his heart out, but cannot overcome the maneuvers of those in on the fix. Stosh tries desperately to help Jackson, but he is unable to change the outcome. Jackson will be banned from baseball for life as one of the “eight men out.” In charming subplots, Stosh saves the boy who would be his great uncle by giving him the flu medicine he has carried with him into the past and, by virtue of obtaining rare, authentic autographs from the nearly illiterate Jackson, he saves his friend’s business when he returns to his own time. Gutman keeps the action fast-paced and exciting. He creates a strong sense of time and place, using photographs and newspaper clippings, as well as Stosh’s acute observations, in a neat interweaving of fact and fantasy. In an afterword, he sets the record straight by clearly distinguishing the two elements. An entertaining romp that will appeal to those who love baseball, history, and fantasy. (Fiction. 9-12)
Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-06-029253-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Fast-paced and plot-driven.
In his latest, prolific author Gratz takes on Hitler’s Olympic Games.
When 13-year-old American gymnast Evie Harris arrives in Berlin to compete in the 1936 Olympic Games, she has one goal: stardom. If she can bring home a gold medal like her friend, the famous equestrian-turned-Hollywood-star Mary Brooks, she might be able to lift her family out of their Dust Bowl poverty. But someone slips a strange note under Evie’s door, and soon she’s dodging Heinz Fischer, the Hitler Youth member assigned to host her, and meeting strangers who want to make use of her gymnastic skills—to rob a bank. As the games progress, Evie begins to see the moral issues behind their sparkling facade—the antisemitism and racism inherent in Nazi ideology and the way Hitler is using the competition to support and promote these beliefs. And she also agrees to rob the bank. Gratz goes big on the Mission Impossible–style heist, which takes center stage over the actual competitions, other than Jesse Owens’ famous long jump. A lengthy and detailed author’s note provides valuable historical context, including places where Gratz adapted the facts for storytelling purposes (although there’s no mention of the fact that before 1952, Olympic equestrian sports were limited to male military officers). With an emphasis on the plot, many of the characters feel defined primarily by how they’re suffering under the Nazis, such as the fictional diver Ursula Diop, who was involuntarily sterilized for being biracial.
Fast-paced and plot-driven. (Historical fiction. 9-12)Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781338736106
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel.
Sure signs that the creative wells are running dry at last, the Captain’s ninth, overstuffed outing both recycles a villain (see Book 4) and offers trendy anti-bullying wish fulfillment.
Not that there aren’t pranks and envelope-pushing quips aplenty. To start, in an alternate ending to the previous episode, Principal Krupp ends up in prison (“…a lot like being a student at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School, except that the prison had better funding”). There, he witnesses fellow inmate Tippy Tinkletrousers (aka Professor Poopypants) escape in a giant Robo-Suit (later reduced to time-traveling trousers). The villain sets off after George and Harold, who are in juvie (“not much different from our old school…except that they have library books here.”). Cut to five years previous, in a prequel to the whole series. George and Harold link up in kindergarten to reduce a quartet of vicious bullies to giggling insanity with a relentless series of pranks involving shaving cream, spiders, effeminate spoof text messages and friendship bracelets. Pilkey tucks both topical jokes and bathroom humor into the cartoon art, and ups the narrative’s lexical ante with terms like “pharmaceuticals” and “theatrical flair.” Unfortunately, the bullies’ sad fates force Krupp to resign, so he’s not around to save the Earth from being destroyed later on by Talking Toilets and other invaders…
Is this the end? Well, no…the series will stagger on through at least one more scheduled sequel. (Fantasy. 10-12)Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-545-17534-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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