Dan Gutman is an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

 from New Jersey

New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

. A prolific writer, Gutman has written 80 books, both fictional and non-fictional, under publishers including Penguin Books

Penguin Books

Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...

, Macmillan

Macmillan Publishers

Macmillan Publishers Ltd, also known as The Macmillan Group, is a privately held international publishing company owned by Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. It has offices in 41 countries worldwide and operates in more than thirty others.-History:...

, Scholastic Press

Scholastic Press

Scholastic is a global book publishing company known for publishing educational materials for schools, teachers, and parents, and selling and distributing them by mail order and via book clubs and book fairs. It also has the exclusive United States' publishing rights to the Harry Potter book...

, and HarperCollins

HarperCollins

HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...

. Many of his books revolve around baseball

Baseball

Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...

.

His best known work is the & Me series of children's novels, also known as the Baseball Card Adventures, which started with Honus & Me

Honus & Me

Honus & Me is a children's novel by Dan Gutman, published in 1997, and the first in the Baseball Card Adventures series. It was rejected by many publishers before HarperCollins finally accepted...

. Each book in the series revolves around a child traveling back in time to meet a baseball legend; the first work was based on the premise of a boy finding a Honus Wagner

Honus Wagner

-Louisville Colonels:Recognizing his talent, Barrow recommended Wagner to the Louisville Colonels. After some hesitation about his awkward figure, Wagner was signed by the Colonels, where he hit .338 in 61 games....

 T206

T206

The tobacco card set known as T206 was issued from 1909 to 1911 in cigarette and loose tobacco packs through 16 different brands owned by the American Tobacco Company...

 baseball card in an attic of his neighbor. Further books in the series feature Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson

Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...

, Babe Ruth

Babe Ruth

George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...

, Shoeless Joe Jackson

Shoeless Joe Jackson

Joseph Jefferson Jackson , nicknamed "Shoeless Joe", was an American baseball player who played Major League Baseball in the early part of the 20th century...

, Dorothy "Mickey" Maguire (the main character, Joe Stoshack, was supposed to meet Mickey Mantle

Mickey Mantle

Mickey Charles Mantle was an American professional baseball player. Mantle is regarded by many to be the greatest switch hitter of all time, and one of the greatest players in baseball history. Mantle was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.Mantle was noted for his hitting...

, but there was an accident and he went back to the times of the AAGPBL instead), Abner Doubleday

Abner Doubleday

Abner Doubleday was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg was his finest hour, but his...

, Satchel Paige

Satchel Paige

Leroy Robert "Satchel" Paige was an American baseball player whose pitching in the Negro leagues and in Major League Baseball made him a legend in his own lifetime...

, Jim Thorpe

Jim Thorpe

Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe * Gerasimo and Whiteley. pg. 28 * americaslibrary.gov, accessed April 23, 2007. was an American athlete of mixed ancestry...

, and Ray Chapman

Ray Chapman

Raymond Johnson Chapman was an American baseball player, spending his entire career as a shortstop for Cleveland....

. According to Dan's official website, he currently is writing another addition to the series entitled Roberto

Roberto Clemente

Roberto Clemente Walker was a Puerto Rican Major League Baseball right fielder. He was born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, the youngest of seven children. Clemente played his entire 18-year baseball career with the Pittsburgh Pirates . He was awarded the National League's Most Valuable Player Award in...

 & Me. The original story, Honus & Me, was made into a Turner Network Television

Turner Network Television

Turner Network Television is an American cable television channel created by media mogul Ted Turner and currently owned by the Turner Broadcasting System division of Time Warner...

 made-for-TV picture entitled The Winning Season, starring Matthew Modine

Matthew Modine

Matthew Avery Modine is an award-winning American actor. His film roles include Private Joker in Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, the title character in Alan Parker's Birdy, high school wrestler Louden Swain in Vision Quest, football star turned spy Alec McCall in Funky Monkey and the...

.

He also wrote over twenty books in the My Weird School

My weird school

My Weird School is a series of first person humorous books by Dan Gutman. The series contains a total of 35 books so far.-Plot overview:The series of books takes place in Ella Mentary Elementary School, where A.J. and his arch-enemy Andrea Young go to school...

series, as well as the Million Dollar series, about children who gets the chance to win a million dollars in various sporting events.

In addition, Gutman was also briefly a syndicated newspaper columnist and videogame magazine editor in the 1980s.

A graduate of Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

, Gutman lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey

Haddonfield, New Jersey

Haddonfield is a borough located in Camden County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the borough had a total population of 11,593....

 with his wife and two children.

External links

• Gutman's official web site, including a complete list of published works
• Dan Gutman Interview at BookReviewsAndMore.ca

Sources

• NY Times article