SOURCE CITATION
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007.
Photograph provided by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

"Sidelights"
A popular and prolific author of books for readers ranging from the early primary grades through high school, as well as for adults, John Gantos, Jr. (better known as Jack Gantos), is considered by many critics and readers to be both a gifted humorist and an insightful observer of childhood feelings and behavior. Gantos has written witty cautionary tales, middle-grade fiction that presents bittersweet reflections on the pains and pleasures of growing up, and young adult fiction that deals frankly with serious themes. However, he is perhaps best known as the creator of Rotten Ralph, a large, anthropomorphic, red cat whose devilish, mostly unrepentant behavior is always forgiven by his owner, Sarah, a patient and loving little girl. Gantos has collaborated on the multi-volume series of picture books that feature the rascally feline with illustrator Nicole Rubel, an artist whose bright colors and bold designs are generally thought to complement the author's brisk, droll prose style well and to add to the huge popularity of the character.

Gantos is also well known for creating the "Jack Henry" books, autobiographical fiction that describes the experiences of the author's alter ego as a fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-grader. Other popular books by Gantos include Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a story about a boy with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), and Desire Lines, a young adult novel about how a teenage boy outs two lesbian classmates in order to save his own reputation. Throughout his works, Gantos has addressed issues that are meaningful to young people, such as the nature of friendship, dealing with jealousy and loneliness, being forgiven and accepted, the importance of playing fair and doing the right thing, and learning how to fit into the often baffling world of adults. Although some of the author's works are considered exaggerated, irreverent, and unsubtle and include elements that are considered gross or unsettling, many critics have noted the positive values in his books, as well as their outrageous humor and underlying poignancy. Gantos is generally regarded as a talented, imaginative writer who understands children and what appeals to them.

Born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, Gantos is the eldest son of John Gantos, Sr., a construction superintendent and salesman of Lebanese descent, and Elizabeth Weaver Gantos. As a first grader, Gantos was in the Bluebird reading group, which he later discovered was for slow readers. He began expressing his creativity at an early age, and when he was in the second grade, he received his first diary. He once commented, "I had an older sister who was very smart. She was in fifth grade and I liked to do everything that she did. . . . One day my mother came home from work and gave her a diary. . . . When I saw that diary, I wanted one, too. My mother said I was too young to have a diary but I didn't think so. I pitched a fit. I howled and sobbed. 'I want a diary,' I cried. 'I want a diary.' She finally gave me one. 'But you better write in it every day,' she said." Gantos did as his mother requested. "I wrote the date, the weather, and what I ate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Food was the most important thing in the world to me and so I wrote about it all the time." Gantos also collected what he would later call "a lot of junk"--shells, rocks, stamps, pennies, bottle caps, baseball cards, butterflies, and "lots more good stuff."

As a second grader, Gantos moved with his family from Pennsylvania to Barbados, where his father felt he could find more work. Young Jack was able to move all of his collections by putting them into his diaries--gluing, pasting, and even drilling holes in the books. The move to Barbados prompted a change in Jack's journal entries. "I began to write about all the stuff that was in my diary. I wrote about where I caught my bugs. I wrote about the stamps I collected. I wrote stories about the photographs I had saved. And I became a lot more excited about keeping a diary because so much of what I wrote about had personal meaning to me. To this day I still put lots of junk in my notebooks and write about it. The junk and stuff has become the details in much of my writing." While in Barbados, Gantos attended British schools that emphasized the importance of reading and writing; he later claimed that by fifth grade he had managed to learn ninety percent of what he knows as an adult. When the family moved from Barbados to south Florida, Gantos found that his new classmates were disinterested in their studies, and teachers generally acted more like disciplinarians than instructors. Consequently, he retreated to an unfrequented bookmobile and read. Gantos began collecting anecdotes--many of which he overheard standing outside of the teacher's lounge--in the sixth grade. In addition, he began writing down his own thoughts and feelings. Gantos maintained, "Most of the stories were from real life. I saw a plane crash and wrote about it. My father rescued a drowning husband and wife in the ocean. He was heroic, and I wrote about it. Once my sister accidentally started a grease fire in the kitchen. The whole house almost burned down but my mom was only thankful that we were safe. She wasn't even angry, and I wrote about how she loved us. I wrote many more stories from my life." Many of these stories were later to provide the inspiration for the author's "Jack Henry" series.

In junior high, Gantos went to a school that had once been a state prison. Once again, he spent most of his time reading outside of the classroom. Gantos decided to become a professional writer when he was in high school. He told an interviewer from Amazon.com, "[M]y diary and journal writing background gave me a lot of confidence that writing was something I had loved all my life." After graduating from high school, Gantos left Florida to attend Emerson College in Boston. While at Emerson, Gantos met art student Nicole Rubel; the pair became friends and decided to work together on picture books for children. Gantos wrote in Fifth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, "She had illustrated a book without words and when I saw it I asked for permission to write the story. We started that way." The author commented, "I made a lot of mistakes. I thought children's books had to be sweet, warm, and gentle." After Gantos received his first rejection letters, he grew frustrated. "Then," he recalled, "I remembered what one of my teachers had told me. She said, 'Write about what you know.' I was sitting at my desk and I looked down at the floor and saw my lousy, grumpy, hissing creep of a cat that loved to scratch my ankles, throw fur around the house, and shred the clothes in my closet." His cat became Rotten Ralph, and a new antihero was born. Gantos's first book, Rotten Ralph, was published in 1976, the year that he received his B.F.A. in creative writing from Emerson College and decided to become a freelance writer. Gantos continued, "It was a great day when I saw that first published book. All the hard work had paid off."

In Rotten Ralph the title character indulges in bad behavior at home, such as crashing his bike into the dining room table; sawing the tree limb that supports the swing of his owner, Sarah; and wearing Father's slippers. Sarah's family takes him to the circus, but Ralph misbehaves so badly that he is left there as punishment. While in the circus, Ralph becomes unhappy as a performer, and he runs away. He is found, ill and underfed, by Sarah, who welcomes him back home. It appears that Ralph has learned his lesson and will become less rotten, but Gantos gives indications that Ralph will revert to his impish self. Writing in Language Arts, Ruth M. Stein called Rotten Ralph a "successful first book by both author and illustrator." Although Zena Sutherland of Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books noted, "There's some humor in the situation, but it seems overworked,"Washington Post Book World critic Brigitte Weeks called Rotten Ralph "a moral tale" that children will "highly appreciate"for seeing a cat in trouble instead of a child.

In subsequent volumes of the series, Ralph continues to be naughty and to get away with it. He ruins Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Valentine's Day, Show and Tell, birthday parties, and even a wedding. In addition, Ralph engages in such activities as teasing his cousin Percy, a sweet, well-mannered cat of whom he is jealous; rubbing garbage and dog food on himself so as not to have to kiss Petunia, the host of a Valentine's Day party he does not want to attend; leading a trio of neighborhood alley cats on a day-long spree in order to prove he is not a softy because he is a house cat; trying to prevent Sarah from making new friends at school; clawing his way into Santa Claus's sack on Christmas Eve; and stealing Aunt Martha's wedding bouquet, which he presents to Sarah as a peace offering. In Not So Rotten, Ralph, Sarah--who, at her most exasperated, simply chastises Ralph mildly--takes him to Mr. Fred's Feline Finishing School, where he is hypnotized into good behavior; however, Sarah misses the old, mischievous Ralph, and successfully lures him back into his natural state. In all of the books in the series, Sarah always gives Ralph her unconditional love, no matter how many stunts he pulls.

Critics have noted that Ralph, with his tricks, ploys, and demands for attention, is very much like a child, and that children are attracted to his gleeful overindulgence. In addition, reviewers have acknowledged that Ralph is popular with children because he ultimately gets away with his crimes and is still accepted by Sarah, who is described as having "the patience of a saint" by one Publishers Weekly contributor in a review of Rotten Ralph's Trick or Treat. In their review of Rotten Ralph's Rotten Christmas, Donnarae MacCann and Olga Richard stated, "Rotten Ralph may be satirizing the arrested development of the spoiled child, but the character of Sarah serves as a wry comment upon overindulgent parents." Ann A. Flowers of Horn Book added, "It is a pleasure to see big, red, devilish Ralph up to his old tricks and acting like a jealous child; he is convincing and might even bring some understanding to children with the same problem." Writing in the Horn Book about Rotten Ralph's Rotten Romance, Elizabeth S. Watson said, "It's no wonder kids love Ralph--what a perfect vicarious way to get back at all those well-meaning adults who make you go to parties where everyone else seems to be having a great time."Assessing the same title in Booklist, Stephanie Zvirin commented that this work, like all of the books in the series, "allows children the vicarious thrill of being unabashedly naughty. But at the same time it provides assurance that even in the face of bad behavior they'll still be loved--something worth talking about."

Not all commentators have been fond of Rotten Ralph. For example, a reviewer in Children's Book Review Service called Worse than Rotten, Ralph a "do-it-yourself guide to mayhem which can be summed up in a few phrases--ridiculous, garish, and makes no sense," while School Library Journal critic Mary B. Nickerson added, "The unrelieved, gratuitous mayhem is, depending on one's age, either boring or threatening." John Peters, writing about Rotten Ralph's Trick or Treat in School Library Journal, noted that "the humor has worn too thin, and Ralph has no redeeming qualities." However, most reviewers find Ralph's adventures both amusing and appealing and extol Gantos's slyly written texts and Rubel's psychedelic line drawings. In his review of Back to School for Rotten Ralph in Booklist, Michael Cart called Ralph "a cat so rambunctiously rotten that you've just gotta love him," while a reviewer for Horn Book added, "Gantos's skillful examination of the child's world is once again evident as the author probes a common negative emotion and suggests, but never preaches, a positive outcome." Ilene Cooper, writing in Booklist about Wedding Bells for Rotten Ralph, puts it succinctly: "Wow, is this cat rotten!"

In addition to their works about Rotten Ralph, Gantos and Rubel have collaborated on several other picture books. They began with Sleepy Ronald, a book about a little rabbit whose constant sleepiness--on roller skates, on the diving board, in the bathroom, and in rehearsals for a Wagnerian opera--brings him trouble until his friend Priscilla realizes that Ronald's ears droop over his eyes and fool him into thinking that it is nighttime. A critic in Kirkus Reviews concluded, "A limp ending if ever we heard one, especially since Rubel's . . . palette is bright enough to wake the dead." However, School Library Journal reviewer Allene Stuart Phy called Ronald "the funniest rabbit to appear in some time," and Betsy Hearne of Booklist called the book "pretty farfetched, but . . . pretty funny, too." In Aunt Bernice, young Ida's parents are going away for the summer, so her Aunt Bernice and her dog, Rex, come to babysit. Aunt Bernice's behavior--such as laughing at a mushy movie, which gets her and Ida kicked out of the theater, and dressing up as a gorilla to scare Ida's friends at a slumber party--embarrasses her niece, and Rex drools and gets his fleas all over everything. Finally, Ida realizes that she is growing fond of Bernice and Rex despite their shortcomings. A reviewer for Publishers Weekly commented, "The spiffy nonsense of Gantos is perfectly complemented, once more, by Rubel's nutty, brashly colored cartoons. Like Rotten Ralph and their other books, their new one is a comic masterpiece." A critic in Kirkus Reviews similarly stated that "for the first time since Rotten Ralph, Gantos's story provides a suitable outlet for Rubel's manic energy."

Besides children and anthropomorphic animals, Gantos and Rubel also use supernatural figures as the main characters in their picture books. In Greedy Greeny, a little green monster has a nightmare after eating the watermelon that his mother was saving for dinner--as well as everything else in the refrigerator. Greeny dreams that he has become the watermelon and that he is going to be served to his family; his shouts awaken his mother, who calms and forgives him. Writing in Booklist, Denise M. Wilms stated, "Humorously didactic, this picture book has the kind of tight, well-placed plot and comic elements that make it a good, working story. . . . Appealing, even if the off-beat isn't your cup of tea,"while a critic for Kirkus Reviews called Greedy Greeny a "holy terror of a guilt dream" and a "close-to-home fantasy"before concluding that the book is "[f]ar-out fun with a firm base." In The Werewolf Family two werewolf parents and their two werewolf children come to a party on the night of the full moon. The family is the picture of decorum before their transformations. However, after they become werewolves, the family dispenses spiders and snakes to babies and puts the other guests in medieval torture instruments such as racks and hanging manacles before returning home. A critic for Kirkus Reviews noted, "If you can accept a sort of Rocky Horror Show equivalent for the picture-book set, Gantos and Rubel are the pair to give it punch." A reviewer for Children's Book Service said, "Aside from being dull, this story . . . is also distasteful and possibly offensive."However, Patricia Homer concluded in School Library Journal that The Werewolf Family "really does take advantage of the immense popularity of monsters and the macabre, but children are bound to be attracted."

While writing his picture books in collaboration with Rubel, Gantos began working part-time at Emerson College as a writing instructor. After receiving his master's degree in creative writing from Emerson, Gantos became an associate professor of creative writing and literature there. He married art dealer Anne A. Lower in 1989; the couple have a daughter, Mabel Grace. In 1993, Gantos became graduate coordinator for the M.A. degree in creative and professional writing at Emerson and also built the M.A./M.F.A. degree concentration in children's book writing and literature.

In 1994, Gantos produced the first of his "Jack Henry" books, Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade. In this collection of autobiographical and semi-autobiographical vignettes, Jack, who has lived in nine houses and has gone to five schools because of his dad's desire to find a better job by moving from place to place, is living in southern Florida. The text, which is written in diary form, is accompanied by samples of Jack's handwriting and photocopied items such as a mouse skin and a squashed bug. Jack gets into situations with family, friends, and neighbors and at school. He fights with his know-it-all sister, attends the funeral of his maternal grandfather, sees his dog eaten by an alligator, and generally tries to do the right thing but lands in trouble. However, Jack bounces back, and in the process performs what Michael Cart called in School Library Journal "acts of unself-conscious kindness." Cart continued, "Jack's a survivor, an 'everyboy' whose world may be wacko but whose heart and spirit are eminently sane and generous." In his conclusion, Cart called Heads or Tails a "memorable book" and Gantos a "terrific writer with a wonderfully wry sensibility, a real talent for turning artful phrases, and a gift for creating memorable characters." A Publishers Weeklyreviewer commented that the author "makes an auspicious foray into new ground" and concluded that a "bittersweet resonance filters the humor in these stories and lingers most welcomely."

In the second volume of the series, Jack's New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year, Jack and his family have moved from Florida to Barbados. Among his other adventures, Jack makes new friends, thinks his parents are lost at sea, gets his heart broken, sees his dad rescue a drowning couple who turn out to be English royalty, loses his birthday money to a shady friend of his father's, and searches for a lost boy who turns up dead. He also thinks that he has gained the power to make things happen and, in the process of trying to be a man, conquers his fear of horses. As in the first volume, Gantos presents readers with both laughable moments and serious thoughts. Writing in Booklist, Susan Dove Lempke said that "the eight stories here convey with sharp humor Jack's uncomfortable yet exhilarating early adolescence." The critic concluded that readers will "anxiously await the next installment of Jack's life." Elizabeth S. Watson added in Horn Book that, as in the first book in the collection, "the first-person narrative authentically reproduces the language and observations of twelve-year-olds. Quirky and funny with some good advice subtly inserted."

In Jack's Black Book Jack is back in Florida after the end of his seventh-grade year. Deciding that he wants to be a serious writer, Jack buys a black book in which to write a novel. His junior high, a former detention center, is a magnet school for training in shop; consequently, the pressure is on him to do well in this subject. Jack makes a dog coffin for his class project, and then has to dig out his dead dog in order to pass seventh grade. When he tries to make a summer business by writing postcards for hire, Jack loses out when a client, a prisoner out on furlough, doesn't like his work and tosses his typewriter into the ocean. Hanging out with his next-door neighbor, juvenile delinquent Gary Pagoda, Jack gets a tattoo of his dead dog on his big toe. He decides to give up his schemes to concentrate on just being himself. A critic for Kirkus Reviews noted that Gantos "trots out one disgusting and dangerous event after another to give his morose protagonist material for jokes." The critic added, "With a mean-spirited reliance on shock and cheap laughs, the book gets some tacked-on introspection at the end."Writing in Horn Book, a reviewer noted, "There's enough descriptive disaster, some good solid writing, and a bizarre plot that even reluctant adults can't help but appreciate."

Gantos is also the author of Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade, a prequel to the other volumes in the "Jack Henry" series. In this book, Jack bonds with his father when he eats a fifty-pound steak, accidentally kills his cat, writes a gross story that appalls his teacher, is locked out of the house naked for putting a live roach in his sister's mouth, and hides from what he thinks are two escaped convicts (actually two of his friends) by lying in a shallow hole along the railroad tracks as a train passes overhead. Jack also wonders why he cries all the time, tries to exercise more self-control, and resolves to do the adult thing rather than the childish one. Writing in Booklist, Susan Dove Lempke stated, "[Gantos's] books about Jack Henry . . . succeed precisely because they present a hilarious, exquisitely painful, and utterly on-target depiction of the life of an adolescent and preadolescent boy."

Gantos became a full professor at Emerson College in 1995. The next year he went to Vermont College, where he became a core faculty member, designed the M.F.A. program, and taught a class on writing for children before returning to Emerson. He has also been a visiting professor at other universities. Gantos produced Zip Six, an adult novel, in 1996. In this work, a drug dealer meets an Elvis impersonator in prison, becomes his manager on the prison circuit, and is betrayed by him on the outside. In 1997 Gantos published Desire Lines, a young adult novel about sixteen-year-old Walker, a loner who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and spends much of his time alone on a golf course. Walker has been spying on two classmates, Karen and Jennifer, who have been making love at a duck pond on the course. When an anonymous teenage preacher comes to the school trying to enlist students for the hate group headed by his father, a minister who builds a church in the town, the boy tries to entice Walker, who refuses to participate. The boy then tries to blackmail Walker by accusing him of being gay. In order to prove his masculinity, Walker forms an alliance with three tough classmates in a gang they call the Box. When the Box members desecrate the new church and Walker is caught, the boys in the Box turn on him and pressure him to identify gays at their school. Walker outs Karen and Jennifer to save himself. When Karen confronts him at school, she asks Walker if he was the person who identified her and her lover, but he refuses to admit the truth. At the duck pond, Walker watches while Karen shoots Jennifer, then herself, in a suicide pact. Jennifer dies, but Karen survives to come back to school, where she again confronts Walker. Walker learns that the Box ratted him out. However, he still refuses to acknowledge his act to Karen. At the end of the novel, Walker is left alone with his guilt. A critic noted in Publishers Weekly,"Gantos projects an unsettling image of cowardice and survival of the toughest. . . . The author reduces the players of this drama to near-stereotypes whose 'desire lines' (chosen paths) are not all that different; in doing so he transmits a one-sided (and pessimistic) view of humanity." A critic in Kirkus Reviews stated that Gantos "is explicit when demonstrating how a climate of fear and suspicion can be concocted in a community, and how insecure young people--gay, straight--can be tormented by it."

In 1998 Gantos published what has become one of his most critically acclaimed works: Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key. In this book, which is directed at middle graders, Joey, a boy in the early primary grades, has attention deficit disorder (ADD) and hyperactivity. He inadvertently does things like swallowing his house key, cutting off his fingernail in a pencil sharpener, and slicing off the tip of his classmate's nose while running with a pair of scissors. Sent to a special education center for six weeks, he is given regulated medication and learns how to manage his behavior. Joey feels strong and hopeful when his treatment is completed. At the end of the story, he returns to his old school, where he is allowed to sit and read in the Big Quiet Chair. Throughout the book, which is narrated by Joey with flashes of humor, readers learn that he has been emotionally abused by his grandmother, who, like Joey, is hyperactive. Horn Book critic Jennifer M. Brabandee noted that Joey's "own brand of goodness has an unaffected charm and an uncloying sweetness. Joey is always explaining to people that he's a good kid; readers of this compelling tragicomedy will know almost from the start that Joey's not just a good kid--he's a great kid." Susan Dove Lempke added in Booklist,"Most teachers and students know at least one child with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and this book will surely help them become more understanding, even as they enjoy Gantos's fresh writing style and tart sense of humor." Writing in School Library Journal, Shawn Brommer commented, "from the powerful opening lines and fast-moving plot to the thoughtful inner dialogue and satisfying conclusions, readers will cheer for Joey, and for the champion in each of us."

A frequent speaker at schools, libraries, conferences, and festivals, Gantos is also the facilitator of writing workshops on children's literature for students and teachers. Regarding his literary career, Gantos once said, "I write for children because they are sincere and authentic in their reactions. I write for adults because I am an adult and I need to write about subjects, dreams, and characters outside the limited scope of the children's genre. I enjoy my work as much as possible. I read good books and I want to write good books." Writing in Fifth Book of Junior Authors and Illustrators, Gantos said, "There are many myths as to what a children's book writer is: perhaps a socially retarded adult, a dreamer who lives in a pink bubble, a moral pervert. I don't care if writers are all of the above as long as they write great fiction for children." Gantos once declared that he was passing by the window of a book store where copies of Rotten Ralph were on display: "Several children were chanting 'Rotten Ralph . . . Rotten Ralph . . . Rotten Ralph . . .' over and over. For a writer to receive such sincere attention is rare. They are a good audience and deserve good books."

PERSONAL INFORMATION
Family: Born July 2, 1951, in Mount Pleasant, PA; son of John (a construction superintendent) and Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos (a banker); married Anne A. Lower (an art dealer), November 11, 1989; children: Mabel Grace. Education: Emerson College, B.F.A., 1976, M.A., 1984. Politics: Liberal Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic. Memberships: American Association of University Professors, National Council of Teachers of English, Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, Writer's Guild. Addresses: Home: 24 Holyoke St., Boston, MA 02116. Office: Emerson College, Division of Writing, Literature and Publishing, 1001 Beacon St., Boston, MA 02116. Agent: Fran Leibowitz, Writers House, 21 West 26th St., New York, NY 10010.

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, fiction; Printz Honors and Sibert Honors, both for Hole in My Life, both c. 2003; other regional and child-selected awards.

CAREER
Author and educator. Emerson College, Boston, MA, part-time writing instructor, 1978-80, adjunct instructor, 1980-86, assistant professor, 1986-92, associate professor of creative writing and literature, 1992-95, former professor of creative writing and literature, beginning in 1995. Visiting professor at Brown University, 1986, University of New Mexico, 1993, and Vermont College, 1996. Frequent speaker at schools, libraries, and educational conferences, and facilitator of writing workshops.