Jack Gantos
| Jack Gantos | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
July 2, 1951 Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania |
| Occupation | writer |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Emerson College |
| Genre | comics |
| Notable works |
Dead End in Norvelt, Hole in My Life |
| Notable awards | 2011 Newbery Medal |
Jack Gantos (born July 2, 1951) is an American author of children's books. He is best known for the fictional characters Rotten Ralph and Joey Pigza. Rotten Ralph is a cat who stars in ten picture books written by Gantos, and illustrated by Nicole Rubel from 1976 to 2011. Joey Pigza is a boy with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), featured in five novels from 1998 to 2014.
Gantos won the 2012 Newbery Medal from the American Library Association (ALA), recognizing Dead End in Norvelt as the previous year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children".Dead End also won the 2012 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction and made the Guardian Prize longlist in Britain.
His 2002 memoir Hole in My Life was a runner up for the ALA Printz Award and Sibert Medal. Previously Gantos was a finalist for the U.S. National Book Award and a finalist for the Newbery Medal for two Joey Pigza books.
Jack Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania near Pittsburgh to construction superintendent John Gantos and banker Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos. The seeds for Gantos's writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could write better than she could. Raised in South Florida and the Caribbean, he began collecting anecdotes in grade school, realizing that everyday stories were the basis of great literature. He was a good high school student, but he lost interest when his family moved. At first Gantos tried staying in Florida alone, but he kept messing up and was failing in school, so something had to change. He found a better opportunity to find things to write about when he followed his family out of the country. He decided to reinvent himself and followed his parents to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. However, he got caught up in the drug game there and through a series of events and bad decisions, including sailing a boat of hash for $10,000, Gantos ended up in Mexico. After serving one year out of a six-year sentence he entered college and continued writing, finally publishing his first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. The latest Rotten Ralph book was published in 2011; there are now 20 titles in the series for young readers. Gantos has written for readers of all ages, including the memoir "Hole in My Life," published in 2002.
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