43 pages • 1 hour read
Dan GutmanHonus and Me
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1997A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Honus Wagner
Honus Wagner’s full name was Johannes Peter Wagner. He was born in 1874 to German immigrants in the borough of Chartiers, now part of Carnegie, Pennsylvania. As a child, his mother called him “Hans,” a nickname that eventually evolved into “Honus.” Wagner’s early life was challenging—he dropped out of school at age 12 to work alongside his father and brothers in the coal mines. In the novel, Wagner shares this part of his life with Joe: “By the time I was your age I was workin’ in the coal mines along with my dad” (40).
Wagner played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1897 to 1917, spending most of his career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He was known as “The Flying Dutchman” because of his incredible speed and German heritage. In Honus & Me, Joe hears people mockingly referring to Wagner by this nickname. Wagner is widely regarded as one of the greatest shortstops in history. In 1936, he was among the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Honus Wagner’s older brother, Albert “Butts” Wagner, also had a brief major league career. In the novel, Honus recounts to Joe how Albert introduced him to baseball and how an injury ended his brother’s career. During the World Series game in the novel, people mistake Joe for Albert.
The T206 Honus Wagner card, central to the plot of Honus & Me, was created by the American Tobacco Company between 1909 and 1911 as part of its T206 series. Wagner refused to allow production of his card to continue, with some suggesting it was due to his opposition to tobacco use. Whatever the reason, the limited production made the T206 Honus Wagner one of the rarest and most valuable baseball cards in history. In 1991, one of these cards was purchased by Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall for $451,000. In the novel, Joe discovers this during his research on Wagner. More recently, the value of the card has skyrocketed: in 2021, a T206 Honus Wagner card sold for $6.6 million.
Literary Context: Time Travel, Otherworldly Realms, and Portals
Honus & Me fits within the genre of children’s historical fiction and fantasy. Many historical fiction works for children incorporate elements of fantasy or time travel, as seen in Honus & Me, to create a transition between the contemporary world and the past. The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne also uses time travel to educate and entertain young readers about history.
When Joe travels back in time to early 20th-century America and meets Honus Wagner, he gains a mentor and a firsthand perspective on life in this bygone era, particularly in the context of baseball. This reflects a common trend in children’s historical fiction: the author humanizes historical events and figures to help young readers learn about the past and connect to it. The magical element of time travel works as a bridge between the past and present. Gutman uses this storytelling device throughout the entire Baseball Card Adventures series: in each novel, Joe travels through time to meet baseball legends, blending history and fantasy.
Children’s fantasy novels such as Honus and Me often use portals to transport their protagonists to another realm. In The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis, a wardrobe transports the child protagonists to the fantastical realm of Narnia. Like Joe, they meet a mentor, though in the animal form of a lion. In Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice travels through a rabbit hole to another world, and in Through the Looking Glass, through a mirror. She also has a mentor in the form of the sage caterpillar. In Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Coraline travels through a door to find a world both similar and uncannily different from her own.
In Honus and Me, the portal is smaller and less obvious. The book follows in the tradition of works like Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story, where an object, in this case a book, transports the child protagonist to an otherworldly dimension. Honus and Me also follows in the tradition of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which features an unexpected portal in the form of a championship cup. In all three books, the characters are transported by something that holds value to them: Bastian in The Neverending Story is in love with books and reading; Harry of the Harry Potter series with heroism and magical adventure, which the championship cup epitomizes; and Joe with baseball.
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By Dan Gutman
