SOURCE CITATION
"Dan Gutman." Authors and Artists for Young Adults, Volume 47. Gale Group, 2003. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph by Carol Van Hook and provided by HarperCollins.

BIOGRAPHICAL ESSAY
The author of almost forty 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. "It was pretty uneventful," Gutman wrote on his Web site, "until June 1, 1968, when I came home from a Little League game and found that my dad had suddenly abandoned my mom, my sister Lucy, and me. It was pretty traumatic, as you can imagine, but we all survived."

Gutman went to college at Rutgers University, graduating in 1977 with a degree in psychology. He went on to graduate school, but, as he noted on his Web site, "After spending a few unhappy years . . . I decided that psychology was not for me. What I really wanted to do, I wanted to write humor, like Art Buchwald or Erma Bombeck." In 1980, he moved to New York City and started working toward his goal, publishing humorous essays in a small newspaper and in children's humor magazines. His attempts at writing magazine articles proved as unsuccessful as his efforts at penning screenplays. Fortunately, books were part of the mix for the budding freelancer. "I thought I had some good book ideas," Gutman noted, "but publishers weren't interested. I received hundreds of rejection letters. It was very frustrating, but I was determined and persistent. I felt I had some ability as a writer, but I didn't know where to direct it."

With the rising popularity of the video game Pac-Man in the early 1980s, Gutman started the magazine Video Games Player. "This was the first (and only) job I ever had," Gutman remarked on his Web site. The magazine prospered, changing its name after a couple of years to Computer Games. An added bonus to this job was that Gutman met his wife through the magazine; she was hired as an illustrator and they married in 1983. Slowly, Gutman became known in the trade as a computer expert. "This was astonishing to me, because I knew next to nothing about computers (I still don't)." But other publications were desperate for writers on computers, and Gutman's status as editor of Computer Games carried some weight. Soon he had a syndicated column in the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Miami Herald. "I felt like a fraud the whole time," Gutman confessed. When Computer Games went out of business in 1985, Gutman became a full-time freelance writer, penning articles on computers, but also on a wider range of subjects, from psychology to sports, placing his articles in a variety of national publications. "I was gaining confidence as a writer," Gutman recalled, "but I still hadn't found the type of writing I really wanted to do."

Turns Hand to Book-Length Topics
In 1987 Gutman decided to focus on sports articles, writing for Discovery about the physics behind the spitball, scuffball, and corked bats. This article in turn led to an adult baseball book, It Ain't Cheatin' if You Don't Get Caught. This book's modest success prompted Gutman to write other adult sports titles, including Baseball Babylon, a history of scandals in the sport. In 1992, with a twelve-year-old son in the house, Gutman decided to try his hand at writing for children. What followed were some more baseball books, as well as books on other sports such as gymnastics and ice skating. Reviewing one of these early titles, Baseball's Greatest Games, in Booklist, Carolyn Phelan commented that Gutman's "ability to re-create dramatic moments, his flair for telling details and quotations, and his staccato reporting of plays makes the book quite readable." Further praise came from Chris Sherman in a Booklist review of World Series Classics, a book, Sherman thought, that "should appeal to all baseball lovers, reluctant readers or not." Reviewing Gutman's Ice Skating in Booklist, Sherman noted that the author "packs in more than enough information for report writers and presents it in a thoroughly entertaining, enthusiastic style." Likewise in a review of Gymnastics, Sherman noted in Booklist that Gutman's "tone throughout is breezy and enthusiastic."

The success of these early titles kept Gutman focused on nonfiction sports books for young readers, but eventually he decided to give fiction a try. His first novel, They Came from Centerfield, blends baseball and alien invasion and was quickly sold to Scholastic publishers. In the book, aliens visit Earth and threaten to destroy it unless a group of kids teach them how to play baseball. With this first fiction title under his belt, Gutman was off and running.

With The Kid Who Ran for President Gutman takes the adult worry about a candidate who might be too old to run for president and flips it on its head. How young is too young to be president? Twelve-year-old Judson Moon means to find out, starting a campaign that has kids across the country sending him campaign contributions. These same kids refuse to clean their rooms or do their homework until their parents pass a constitutional amendment getting rid of the age restriction for president. In a Booklist review, Phelan felt that "this first-person novel is an entertaining romp through the political process." A contributor for Publishers Weekly also lauded the book, writing that "the author pulls off a feat as impressive as Judd's victory: he actually makes his hero a credible 12-year-old." The same reviewer called the book a "snappy, lighthearted farce." Gutman reprised the formula in his 1999 sequel, The Kid Who Became President, in which Judson Moon, now thirteen, becomes president. Sara Nelson, writing in Family Life, felt that the "cross-cultural tidbits here are gems."

Branching Out
With 1997's Honus and Me Gutman hit on a winning combination, though editors were at first reluctant to grasp it. The book went to a number of publishers over several years before a sympathetic editor saw the potential in this time-slip sports story. While cleaning out an old woman's attic, twelve-year-old Joe Stoschak finds a mint-condition baseball card from 1909. It is, in fact, the most valuable baseball card in the world, the Honus Wagner T-206. Honus, a baseball great, soon plays a part in the book, as Joe, wondering if he should return the card (worth $450,000) to its rightful owner, is transported back in time by rubbing the card. Back in 1909, Honus helps Joe not only with his moral quandary, but also with his baseball swing. Reviewers and readers alike found the book a winner. A contributor for Publishers Weekly called the juvenile novel a "joyfully entertaining yarn" and concluded that for sports fans "who like a snappy plot along with the play-by-play, this novel hits at least a triple." Booklist reviewer Ilene Cooper dubbed the book a "peppy, pleasing offering" that will "delight young baseball fans" and even non-sports readers who will "enjoy the fantasy elements."

Further titles dealing with Joe and other magical baseball cards followed, initiated by Gutman's enthusiastic editor. Jackie and Me takes Joe back to 1947 to go on an adventure with Jackie Robinson during his rookie season with the Brooklyn Dodgers, experiencing in person the racial prejudice which this African-American ball player had to overcome. In Babe and Me Joe time-travels to 1932 with his father to see firsthand whether or not the great Babe Ruth called his legendary home run in the third game of the World Series before he hit the ball. With Shoeless Joe and Me, Joe travels back to 1919 in hopes of preventing the Black Sox Scandal and saving the reputation of the great "Shoeless Joe" Jackson.

Reviewers responded positively to Gutman's time-slip books. Karen Hutt, reviewing Jackie and Me in Booklist, felt fans "will enjoy the baseball action, which is enhanced by historical photos of Robinson's rookie year." In a review of Babe and Me, Gillian Engberg in Booklist noted that Gutman "weaves a delightfully improbable fantasy from actual events" to create a novel full of "action," "rich baseball lore, and the sense of adventure." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly thought that Gutman's account of the World Series as well as Joe's own relationship with his father in Babe and Me "are equally skillful." And in a Booklist review of Shoeless Joe and Me, Phelan called the book a "not-quite believable, but still highly enjoyable time-travel adventure."

When Eddie Ball wins a poetry contest, he gets a chance to win a million dollars by shooting a free throw during half-time at an NBA game. Along the way to the novel's exciting climax, Gutman takes time out to describe Eddie's relationships with his widowed mother, with his friend, Annie, a black girl in his trailer park, and with Annie's father who once lost his own chance to play professional basketball and now wants to see Eddie succeed. Other plot complications include a mysterious individual who is pulling pranks on Eddie in hopes of shaking him before his big free throw. Booklist's Lauren Peterson found The Million-Dollar Shot "a solidly written story that will appeal to a larger audience than most sports novels do." Gutman noted on his Web site, "Many kids have told me this is my best book."

With The Million-Dollar Kick, Gutman does for soccer what he did for basketball in The Million-Dollar Shot. Whisper Nelson, a seventh grader in Oklahoma City, enters a slogan-writing contest and gets the chance to win a million dollars with a single shot against the goalkeeper of the local team. Whisper is Gutman's first female main character. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly found The Million-Dollar Kick to be a book that would appeal to "reluctant players and soccer fans alike," while Booklist contributor Anne O'Malley noted that Gutman "captures Whisper's pain and dry wit beautifully in this strong story about a teen getting through tough times." "This is an exciting sports story with a compelling message about individuality and self-reliance, as well as a touch of romance," commented Elaine E. Knight in a School Library Journal review of The Million-Dollar Kick.

Gutman has also produced many non-sports novels. Virtually Perfect is a story about the son of a movies special-effects expert who creates what Gutman calls a "vactor" or a virtual actor on a computer. When the boy, Yip, feeds the vactor enough intelligence, it comes through the screen and begins to exist in the real world like a real kid. Yip's failure to program a proper conscience in the vactor brings strong consequences, however. "Gutman taps out a smoothly diverting "What if?' tale," wrote a contributor for Publishers Weekly. "Its breezy dialogue and quick pace give this caper the scent of a smartly written sitcom; readers will supply the laugh track."

With Johnny Hangtime, which Gutman counts among his best books, the novelist deals with another aspect of films: the Hollywood stuntman. In this book the stuntman is thirteen-year-old Johnny Thyme, who does all the stunts for teen idol Ricky Corvette, a miserable person in real life but a hero in his guise as a movie star. Trouble is, Johnny has to do his stunts in secret so that fans do not know Ricky is not doing them. This in turn gets Johnny into trouble at school, as he cannot get involved in any activities that might injure him. Things come to a climax in a stunt involving Niagara Falls, where Johnny's father was supposedly killed. Tim Wadham, reviewing Johnny Hangtime in School Library Journal, had reservations about the realism of the plot in which a young teen would be allowed to do such stunts, but concluded: "Still, there are some laugh-out-loud moments, and the action will appeal to readers wanting high-interest, low-reading-level material."

Other non-sports stories deal with the adventures of Qwerty Stevens. In The Edison Mystery thirteen-year-old Qwerty goes into the backyard after a fight with his mother. Digging, he finds what he thinks is an early phonograph once belonging to inventor Thomas Edison who had his workshop in the vicinity. However, the device is actually a machine that sends Qwerty off to Spain and then to Edison's lab where the inventor is busy working on the first light bulb. In search of her brother, Qwerty's sister soon turns up in 1879, and the united siblings quickly realize they are stuck in the past if Edison can't somehow send them home. "The story is chock-full of interesting tidbits about Edison's life," wrote Lisa Prolman in School Library Journal, "and provides a good glimpse of life in the 19th century." Prolman further commented, "Overall, this is an entertaining novel that should draw fans of time-travel stories." Gutman reprised this idea with his Qwerty Stevens, Stuck in Time with Benjamin Franklin, in which the Edison machine sends him back to Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.

Gutman maintains a busy speaking schedule, visiting schools across the country and presenting a program which uses sports as a theme to get students excited about reading and writing. "This has been the most satisfying thing I've done in my career," Gutman reported on his Web site. "When I visit a school I inspire the kids, the kids inspire me, and I even get paid for it! Finally . . . I figured out what my career should be--writing fiction for kids and visiting schools. For the first time I felt that I was doing something I was good at, something that was fun, creatively rewarding, and appreciated by an audience. Kids often tell me that my books make them laugh. This is funny to me, because writing humor was what I wanted to do when I got started back in 1980! It just took me a while to figure out the best way to do it."

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Born October 19, 1955, in New York, NY; son of Sid Gutman (in advertising) and Adeline (a homemaker; maiden name, Wernick) Berlin; married Nina Wallace (an illustrator), September 25, 1983; children: Sam, Emma. Education: Rutgers University, B.A., 1977, M.A., 1979. Addresses: Home and office: 224 Euclid Ave., Haddonfield, NJ 08033.; Agent: Mitch Rose, 799 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

AWARDS
Sequoyah Book Award, and Nutmeg Children's Book Award, both 1999, Volunteer State Book Award, 2000, and Iowa Children's Choice Award, and Maud Harte Lovelace Award, both 2001, all for The Million-Dollar Shot; Keystone Book Award, 2000, for Jackie and Me; California Young Reader Medal, 2001, for Honus and Me; Nevada Young Readers' Award, 2001, for Virtually Perfect.

CAREER
Video Review Publications, coeditor of Electronic Fun, 1982-83; Carnegie Publications, founder and editor-in-chief of Computer Games, 1983-84; freelance writer, 1984--.