The author of over 80 books in a little over a decade of writing, Dan Gutman has written on topics from computers to baseball. Beginning his freelance career as a nonfiction author dealing mostly with sports for adults and young readers, Gutman has concentrated on juvenile fiction since 1995. His most popular titles include the time-travel sports book Honus and Me and its sequels, and a clutch of baseball books, including The Green Monster from Left Field. From hopeful and very youthful presidential candidates to stunt men, nothing is off limits in Gutman's fertile imagination. As he noted on his author Web site, since writing his first novel, They Came from Centerfield, in 1994, he has been hooked on fiction. "It was fun to write, kids loved it, and I discovered how incredibly rewarding it is to take a blank page and turn it into a WORLD."
Gutman was born in New York City in 1955, but moved to Newark, New Jersey the following year and spent his youth there.
Another bedtime book that my children love. One of my daughters said that it was “sigma slay.” Ha! I have no idea what that means but she said that it’s a good thing.
So funny.It brightened my day so much❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖📖❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️I LOVE this book so much😻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀🙀😻😻😻😻😻😻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻😻😻👍🏻😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this book
Dr. Cables, the president of the Board of Education, cancels all holidays at Ella Mentry as part of his evil plan, but A.J.and his classmates discover that every day is a holiday and learn about them thanks to Mrs. Roopy, the school librarian.
Won a finished paperback copy of this book in a Goodreads giveaway!
I really enjoyed this quick read for multiple reasons: the humor is spot on for a kid, and I as an adult laughed several times out loud as well; the book reads like it's written from the POV of a young boy, as not only is the language accessible and in keeping with the vocab, etc., of a kid, but the inclusion of footnotes after conducting research at the library is so accurate (kids always start doing the things they just learned about!); and the illustrations are fun and support the text, even if I wish they were actually in color instead of black and white. I also noticed that the book has ink marks throughout from what looks like a poor printing job, but I'm hoping that's not widespread; I didn't receive an ARC, otherwise I would have attributed it to that. A few of the holidays and what everyone does to celebrate them seem a tad unrealistic (e.g., running around the playground in their underwear and throwing pumpkins off the roof), but the whole of the story is good fun.
Overall, I think most people would appreciate this book! I'd love to check out more of this series and writer and I'm guessing his other books likely have this impact. Seems like the kind of author who understands kids and what they want and I could see kids reading more of these books once they read one because by then they'd be hooked!