My Son, the Time Traveler (The Zack Files)

Dan Greenburg has known success as a humorist, a novelist, a journalist, a screenwriter, and a playwright. Now he has turned his considerable talent to writing an original new series of books for a younger audience. Inspired by his own son Zack, for whom the hero of his new series, The Zack Files, is named, Greenburg has combined his love of humor, his interest in things paranormal, and his talent for writing to create books that kids like Zack will want to read.With 18 books to his credit, Dan Greenburg's work has been translated into 19 languages and is available in 22 countries. His best-selling titles for adults include How to Be a Jewish Mother, How to Make Yourself Miserable, Scoring, Love Kills, How to Avoid Love and Marriage and Exes. His previous books for children include Young Santa, The Bed Who Ran Away From Home, Jumbo the Boy and Arnold the Elephant.His articles have appeared in the New Yorker, Esquire, Ms., Time, Newsweek, Life, New York magazine, Cosmopolitan, the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Playboy, and have been reprinted in 33 anthologies of humor and satire in the United States and England.Born and raised in Chicago, Dan Greenburg received a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Illinois, and his M.A. from UCLA. He is the father of Zack, a teenage son, who played the title role in the motion picture, LORENZO'S OIL, and served as the inspiration for The Zack Files. Mr. Greenburg lives in Westchester County, New York.

Grade 2-4?In this entry in the series, Zack, a fifth grader, tells of meeting his future son. In a fairly standard take on time travel, Zack's son Mack, 10, goes on a class trip to see what the "old" New York of 1997 was like. He accidentally runs into his dad-to-be after buying the Wade Boggs card Zack had been coveting. It turns out that Mack is trying to buy the card to replace the one his dad cherished and he had accidentally lost. This little sidetrack separates Mack from his classmates, and the rest of this slight tale revolves around the race to find the schoolbus before it returns to the future. Mack begins flickering, and the fear that he might miss the bus and de-atomize (disappear) provides what little suspense there is in the story. This breezy bit of fluff should attract reluctant readers, and perhaps a few others. There's no real plot or character development, and the elements involving time travel are extremely derivative, coming straight from movies like Back to the Future. The full-page, black-and-white cartoons add little. For collections where the "Zack" books are popular.?Tim Wadham, Dallas Public Library, TX
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