The Fabulous Fifty (A Jean Karl Book) - Hardcover

Dr. Morton Grosser was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Creative Writing Fellow. He is a management and technology consultant, and the author of seven books, including The Discovery of Neptune and Gossamer Odyssey. He has published fiction and nonfiction in many magazines including the Atlantic, Harper's and the New Yorker. He lives in California and is currently working on his eighth book.

Grade 7-9-- The Fabulous Fifty refers to the winners of a contest put on by a Philadelphia newspaper in which the contestants must clip coupons from each day's paper. Those who collect the most coupons win, and the top prize is a trip to the 1921 World Series. Sol Janus and his buddies set about collecting coupons mostly through underhanded means, encountering many obstacles in the often tempestuous melting pot of south Philadelphia along the way. Grosser is best at describing the hard edges and the often violent life in the ethnic neighborhoods of immigrant America in the 1920s. The story shifts when Sol and his buddy Tony go to New York as winners of the contest and watch the World Series between the Giants and the Yankees. Each game in the nine-game series is described with accurate and obviously well-researched detail. It's all of these details that ultimately do the story in, however, for the descriptions of the games are lackluster. Tony and Sol's other great New York adventure is to bet with some local clothes merchants on each day's game. The boys win big, and trade their winnings for clothes, but even these parts of the book get stuck in the elaborate and loving descriptions of suits and socks. The overall effect is like many a story told by old codgers--after a promising beginning, the story gets a bit long-winded. --Todd Morning, Schaumburg Township Public Library, IL
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