Jack Gantos’ Bio & Photos
Dead End in Norvelt is the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal for the
year's best contribution to children's literature and the Scott O'Dell Award for
Historical Fiction!
Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt
is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose
plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by
his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he
gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom
loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual
chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded
his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange
adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade
airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from
the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this
sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh
out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up
in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is
confusing, and the future is completely up in the air.
Jack Gantos has written books for people of all ages, from picture books and middle-grade fiction to novels for young adults and adults. His works include Hole in My Life, a memoir that won the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert honors; Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, and Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book.
Jack was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and grew up in the nearby town of Norvelt. He remembers playing a lot of “pass the chalk” in Mrs. Neiderheizer’s class in first grade. He was in the Bluebird reading group, which he later found out was for the slow readers. To this day he’d rather be called a Bluebird than a slow reader. His favorite game at that time was playing his clothes were on fire and rolling down a hill to save himself.
When he was seven, his family moved to Barbados. He attended British schools, where there was much emphasis on reading and writing. Students were friendly but fiercely competitive, and the teachers made learning a lot of fun. By fifth grade he had managed to learn 90 percent of what he knows to this very day.
When the family moved to south Florida, he found his new classmates uninterested in their studies, and his teachers spent most of their time disciplining students. Jack retreated to an abandoned bookmobile (three flat tires and empty of books) parked out behind the sandy ball field, and read for most of the day. His greatest wish in life is to replace trailer parks with bookmobile parks, which he thinks will eliminate most of the targets for tornadoes and educate an entire generation of great kids who now go to schools that are underfunded and substandard.
The seeds for Jack’s writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister’s diary and decided he could write better than she could. He begged his mother for a diary and began to collect anecdotes he overheard at school, mostly from standing outside the teachers’ lounge and listening to their lunchtime conversations. Later, he incorporated many of these anecdotes into stories.
In junior high he went to a school that had been converted from a former state prison. He thinks the inmates probably fled for their lives once the students showed up. Again, he spent most of his time reading on his own.
In high school he decided to become a writer. But he would have to wait another three years, until he went to college, before he could actually meet other writers and study with teachers who thought writing amounted to more than just cribbing book reports and composing sympathy notes.
Jack in fourth grade
While in college, he and an illustrator friend, Nicole Rubel, began working on picture books. After a series of well-deserved rejections, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. It was a success and the beginning of Jack’s career as a professional writer. This surprised a great many people who thought he was going to specialize in rehabilitating old bookmobiles into housing for retired librarians.
Jack continued to write children’s books and began to teach courses in children’s book writing and children’s literature. He developed the master’s degree program in children’s book writing at Emerson College and the Vermont College M.F.A. program for children’s book writers. He now devotes his time to writing books and educational speaking.
His publications can take a reader from “cradle to grave”—from picture books and middle-grade fiction to novels for young adults and adults.
Mr. Gantos is known nationally for his educational creative writing and literature presentations to students and teachers. He is a frequent conference speaker, university lecturer, and in-service provider.
Interviews, articles, and other online resources
- Interviews with Jack Gantos (2007 and 2011) at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, A Blog About Books. 2007: http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=937 2011: http://blaine.org/sevenimpossiblethings/?p=2165
- “Jack Gantos: Author Program In-depth Interview.” TeachingBooks.net (August 14, 2001).
- “Jack Gantos: On Domestic Craziness and Big-Hearted Kids.” An interview with Gail P. Gregg, The ALAN Review, volume 28, number 2 (Winter 2001).
- “Jack Gantos on Journaling.” A video interview, TeachingBooks.net, 2001.
- “Jack Gantos at the National Book Festival.” Library of Congress, 2005.
- “Meet the Author: A Video Interview with Jack Gantos.” ReadingRockets.org (undated).
- “The Next Level: Using Journals to Write Great Short Stories” by Jack Gantos. Book Links, volume 7, number 5 (May 1998).
- “Q&A with Jack Gantos.” skateboardmom.com, 2001.
- “Writing What I Know & Finding Joey Pigza” by Jack Gantos. Scholastic.com (undated).
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