OK, this is not in Livingston, but it's only a few minutes away, and if you have kids, they'll thank me for alerting you to this event in South Orange.

Dan Gutman, a former Floods Hill sledder, South Orange Public Library regular, starter on the Galante Funeral Home Giants baseball team, and best-selling author of 98 books (so far!) will visit the South Orange Public Library on Friday, May 13 at 6:30 p.m. Gutman will sign books at Sparkhouse afterwards, starting around 7:30 p.m.

The author of series such as My Weird School, My Weird School Daze, and popular titles such as Babe & Me, and Nightmare at the Book Fair is coming to South Orange for a simple reason, explains Beth Halliday, Head of Children’s Services. “We invited him,” she explains. 

Last summer, a participant in the reading program’s Pen-Pal Club wrote a long letter to Gutman, his favorite author. Gutman replied not with a form letter, but with a personal note that recalled his Ivy Hill upbringing and memories of sledding in South Orange and eating ice cream at Gruning’s on South Orange Avenue.

The library and Sparkhouse are partnering in this project, a first-time collaboration that both find exciting. After Gutman speaks to kids, ages six and up, and their parents at the library, he will walk across the street to Sparkhouse, where he will sell and sign books. The library is opening especially for the presentation on that Friday; Gutman will be upstairs, and his talk is intended for children first grade and older.

Gutman has written adult and children’s books that focus on sports. On his website, Gutman explains, “it's the only kind of entertainment where nobody knows the outcome in advance.” Many of Gutman’s works take the main character back in time, to play ball with Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth or even Abner Doubleday, credited with inventing baseball.

As to why baseball, he jokes, “It's easy to write about baseball because there's plenty of time when the players are standing around trying to figure out what to do next.”

What Halliday saw when she met Gutman was that he stopped, listened and talked to each child, one at a time. “Not everyone does that,” she says. And maybe that’s one reason for Gutman’s success; he hears what kids have to say and writes with them in mind.

And, most of all, says Gutman on his website, he makes kids laugh -- for 98 books and counting.