Dan Gutman's latest Baseball Card Adventure book is Ted & Me, about batting great Ted Williams. This is the eleventh book in the series, although after reading the first title (Honus & Me) to learn how Joe's time traveling adventures came about, there is no need to read the stories in order. Joe has the opportunity to go back in time to prevent the cataclysmic Pearl Harbor attack in December, 1941. While this seems a noble endeavor, good questions are raised about what would have happened with the Nazis had the U.S. not entered the war and defeated Germany. In fact, during the course of the adventure, Stosh encounters several instances of public anti-semitic rants, including a historically accurate one from famous aviator Charles Lindbergh. Ted Williams is an interesting character who was famous for his salty language, and the author conveys this while not using any of the specific words--readers see many uses of symbols like !@#$%! instead. Joe's adventure is harrowing at times: he is involved in a near-crash landing of a war plane and is beaten up at a pro-Nazi political rally. Both events he is able to escape safely. There is a nice exchange between Stosh and his elderly uncle about making choices in life in such a way that one can look back later and have no regrets. This series of books will appeal to young baseball fans (lots and lots of baseball facts/games/stats!) and budding historians as well. There are many descriptions of the differences between the modern day and the given historical period that some youngsters may simply otherwise take for granted. The author includes a nice Afterword with more information and resources about Williams' career, as well as a rundown on what in the book is historically accurate and what is not.
