THE BASEBALL CARD KID
by Adam Osterweil and illustrated by Craig Smith
The slapstick time-travel antics continue in this sequel to The Comic Book Kid (2001). Still wracked with guilt over having ruined one of his father’s priceless possessions—a Honus Wagner baseball card—nine years before and egged on by his reckless buddy Paul, 13-year-old Brian takes advantage of an offer in a comic book from the future to slip back to the Titanic in search of a replacement. As a result, he helps to save the doomed ship, leading to a disastrously changed future and a string of frantic remedial voyages. Catapulting back and forth over billions of years the travelers squeak past such adversaries as a sullen young vampire and monstrous mutant microbes in an ultimately successful effort to restore human history to a (more or less) recognizable form. Definitely writing for readers with short attention spans, Osterweil laces his narrative with middle-grade–style yuks and injects frequent reviews of events into his breathlessly paced tale. Smith punches up the short chapters further with frequent scenes of frantic-looking young folk in bizarre situations. Time Warp Trio lite. (Fantasy. 9-11)