The Comedy Keeper [Paperback]

Only a Comedy Keeper can save laughter at its source! In this novel for serious class clowns, 12-year old Josh Markowitz must travel back to 1908 to convince an unruly family of very funny brothers to fulfill their comic destinies. It starts when Josh, the Class Clown of Patton Middle School in McMinnville, Oregon gets in trouble (again) for being a little bit too funny in school. The detention he receives threatens to ruin his baseball season. His friends Omar, Amy and the fabulous, fake English exchange student Elizabeth Walcot Woolcott all sympathize, but the evil Stevie San Pedro thinks Josh deserves his punishment. Josh goes to the old magic shop on the wrong side of town where an ageless clown named Slivers makes Josh a deal: Convince some old friends of his to become comedians, and Slivers will get him out of detention. The friends are the famous Marx Brothers - Groucho, Harpo, Chico, Gummo and Zeppo -- long before they would begin their careers as comedians and movie stars, and they need a kick-start from history. As a Comedy Keeper, Josh must convince the funny brothers to take up comedy, or be forever lost to history. Without a boost from him, Slivers explains, there would never be Marx Brothers movies, and without that there would be no Saturday Night Live, Jerry Seinfeld or Simpsons. The future of comedy depends on Josh! Josh activates The Great Wandini - a magical fortune-telling machine that can send people careening through time, and he is transported to the streets of New York City in 1908, where he is befriended by none other than Julius, Arthur and Leonard Marx . . . the brothers who would one day become famous. But only if Josh succeeds! The brothers Marx don't even know they're comedians yet; they have a singing act in vaudeville theaters with their mother, Minnie, and have no intention of changing it. But after witnessing much hilarity between the brothers at their cramped apartment, Josh convinces them that their future lies in comedy. To colƒ$