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 About
the Author
Jack Gantos was
born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. He
remembers a lot of "pass the chalk" in
Mrs. Neiderheizer's 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 pretending
that 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 school, 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, 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 that 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 that 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 composing
diary entries and good birthday cards.
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 marked the beginning of Jack's
career as a professional writer. This surprised
a great many people who thought he was going to
be a mechanic specializing in rehabilitating old
bookmobiles.
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 is now teaching in the
Vermont College M.F.A. program for children's
book writers.
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.
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