All Star!: Honus WAgner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever

All Star!: Honus Wagner and the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever

• author:  Jane Yolen  http://janeyolen.com/
• illustrator:  Jim Burke  http://jimburkeillustration.com/
• year of publication:  2010
• publication city:  New York, NY
• publisher:  Philomel Books
• ISBN:  978-0-399-24661-6

Annotation:  This is the story of Honus Wagner, a brilliant turn of the century baseball player who played for the love of the game. In July 2007, his rarest baseball card sold for almost three million dollars.  Find out why?

Personal Thoughts:  Jane Yolen has again written an engrossing tale of a child of German immigrants growing up, working hard and finding a living doing what he loved best.  Honus Wagner’s story is richly told in informative tidbits of life at the turn of the 20^th century.  We see Honus grow up poor, work manual labor in the coal mines and play baseball on Sundays with all his heart.  Yolen emphasizes the importance of baseball in the 19 “oughts”, when players didn’t take “performance enhancing” drugs or use scientifically proven practice techniques.  It was all for the love of the game.  Jim Burke’s artwork is pleasant with attractive, yet muted illustrations that are nice to look at while complementing the text.  Yolen and Burke really work well to put the reader back in the time when baseball was truly America’s pastime. 

Strangely, however, is the little amount of attention given to the Most Famous Baseball Card Ever.  We really only learn about one or two pages worth of information about the famous card.  My guess is that the authors felt that the price of the card would spark more interest in an otherwise unspectacular baseball legend.  I think the story of Honus Wagner was enough to keep me engaged in the story.  But the card’s value was interesting too.