Funny Boy Takes on the Chit-Chatting Cheeses from Chattanooga (11 page)

Once again the forces of funniness had thwarted evil. I not only saved the world and conquered the forces of evil but I even got the girl. I was like the James Bond of kids!

Once again, I had made the world safe. Safe for mint-flavored dental floss and supermodels. Safe for inflatable furniture and battery-operated candy dispensers. Safe for the windchill factor and for movies based on thirty-year-old TV sitcoms that weren’t even good thirty years ago.

That concludes this adventure. Until we meet again, my friends, let me leave you with two small pieces of wisdom. First, always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else. Second, if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is definitely not for you.

Dan Gutman was born in a log cabin in Illinois and used to write by candlelight with a piece of chalk on a shovel. Oh, wait a minute, that was Abraham Lincoln. Actually, Dan Gutman grew up in New Jersey and, for some reason, still lives there.

Somehow, Dan survived his bland and uneventful childhood, and then attended Rutgers University, where he majored in psychology for reasons he can’t explain. After a few years of graduate studies, he disappointed his mother by moving to New York City to become a starving writer.

In the 1980s, after several penniless years writing untrue newspaper articles, unread magazine articles, and unsold screenplays, Gutman supported himself by writing about video games and selling unnecessary body parts. He edited
Video Games Player
magazine for four years. And, although he knew virtually nothing about computers, he spent the late 1980s writing a syndicated column on the subject.

In 1990, Gutman got the opportunity to write about something that had interested him since childhood: baseball. Beginning with
It Ain’t Cheatin’ If You Don’t Get Caught
(1990), Gutman wrote several nonfiction books about the sport, covering subjects such as the game’s greatest scandals and the history of its equipment.

The birth of his son, Sam, inspired Gutman to write for kids, beginning with
Baseball’s Biggest Bloopers
(1993). In 1996, Gutman published
The Kid Who Ran for President
, a runaway hit about a twelve-year-old who (duh!) runs for president. He also continued writing about baseball, and the following year published
Honus & Me
, a story about a young boy who finds a rare baseball card that magically takes him back to 1909 to play with Honus Wagner, one of the game’s early greats. This title stemmed a series about time-travel encounters with other baseball stars such as Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, and, in
Ted & Me
(2012), Ted Williams.

In his insatiable quest for world domination, Dan also wrote
Miss Daisy Is Crazy
(2004) and launched the My Weird School series, which now spans more than forty books, most recently
Mayor Hubble Is in Trouble!
(2012).

As if he didn’t have enough work to do, Gutman published
Mission Unstoppable
(2011), the first adventure novel in the Genius Files series, starring fraternal twins Coke and Pepsi McDonald. There will be six books in the series, in which the twins are terrorized by lunatic assassins while traveling cross-country during their summer vacation. These books are totally inappropriate for children, or anybody else for that matter.

Gutman lives in Haddonfield, New Jersey, with his wife and two children. But please don’t stalk him.

Gutman and his sister Lucy in New York in 1956.

A young, stylish Gutman at home in Newark, New Jersey.

Gutman in his Little League uniform in 1968.

Gutman with two babies born in 1990:

the first baseball book he wrote, and his son, Sam.

Gutman in Liverpool, England, at the site of the real Strawberry Field. “I idolize the Beatles and they inspire all my books,” he says.

Gutman and his dentist at play (we hope).

Gutman in the midst of adoring fans at

Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville, Illinois.

When he’s not writing, Gutman’s busy with his favorite hobby, biking.