Jack Gantos (born July 2 1951) (real name: John Bryan Gantos, Jr.) is an American author of children's books renowned for his portrayal of fictional Joey Pigza, a boy with ADHD. Gantos has won a number of awards, including the Newbery Honor, the Printz Honor, and the Sibert Honor from the American Library Association, and he has been a finalist for the National Book Award. His newest book, The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs (2006), deals with twins, eugenics, taxidermy (in particular, human taxidermy), and implicit incest.
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Biography
Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania to son of construction superintendent John Gantos and banker Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos. He moved to a Caribbean island( St Croix) and began to train as a builder. He soon realized that construction was not his forté and started saving for college. He decided to move to complete high school and while staying in a motel a friend introduced him to hash. He soon hooked up with a drug smuggler and was offered a chance to make 10 000 dollars by sailing to New York with 2,000 pounds of hash. With an English psycho captain on board they set off to the big city. Once there they hung out at the Chelsea hotel and Gantos carried on dreaming about college. Then, in Jacks own words, "The shit hit the fan" and the F.B.I burst in on him. He managed to escape and hid out in the very same motel he was living during high school. However, he saw sense and turned himself in. He was sentenced to one and a half years in prison, which he describes in his novel -Hole in my life-. however he found a plan that involved getting him released in prison and accepted into college. It worked. He received his BFA and his MA both from Emerson College. He married art dealer Anne A. Lower on November 11, 1989. The couple has one child, Mabel Grace.
Awards
- Best Books for Young Readers citation, American Library Association (ALA), 1976-93, for the "Rotten Ralph" series
- Children's Book Showcase Award, 1977, for Rotten Ralph
- Emerson Alumni Award, Emerson College, 1979, for Outstanding Achievement in Creative Writing
- Massachusetts Council for the Arts Awards finalist, 1983, 1988
- Gold Key Honor Society Award, 1985, for Creative Excellence
- National Endowment for the Arts grant, 1987
- Quarterly West Novella Award, 1989, for X-Rays
- Children's Choice citation, International Reading Association, 1990, for Rotten Ralph's Show and Tell
- Batavia Educational Foundation grant, 1991
- West Springfield Arts Council (WESPAC) grant, 1991
- Parents' Choice citation, 1994, for Not So Rotten Ralph
- New York Public Library Books for the Teenage, 1997, for Jack's Black Book
- Silver Award, 1999, for Jack on the Tracks
- Great Stone Face Award, Children's Librarians of New Hampshire, National Book Award finalist for Young People's Literature, ALA Notable Children's Book, NCSS and CBC Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies, School Library Journal Best Book of the Year, Riverbank Review Children's Book of Distinction, and New York Public Library "One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing," all 1999, Iowa Teen Award, Iowa Educational Media Association, Flicker Tale Children's Book Award nomination, North Dakota Library Association, and Sasquatch Award nomination, all 2000, all for Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key
- Newbery Honor, ALA, 2001, for Joey Pigza Loses Control
- National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Creative Writing,m fiction
- Printz Honors and Sibert Honors, both for Hole in My Eyes, both c. 2003 He was a huge fan of mullets.
Novels
- Jack Henry series
- Jack's Black Book
- Joey Pigza Series:
- Joey Pigza Swallowed The Key (1998)
- Joey Pigza Loses Control (2000)
- What Would Joey Do? (2003)
- I am Not Joey Pigza (2007)
- Other
- Hole in My Life (2004)
- The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs (2006)
References
- Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006.
