Gantos, Jack (1951-…), is an American author mainly of books for children and young adults. He won the 2012 Newbery Medal for Dead End in Norvelt (2011). The Newbery Medal is awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. Dead End in Norvelt is a comic historical novel. It describes the unexpected adventures of a 12-year-old boy named Jack Gantos one summer in the small town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania. Gantos also wrote a sequel, From Norvelt to Nowhere (2013).
Gantos has written for young readers at all levels, from the early primary grades through high school. His books have been praised for their humor and for their sympathetic observations about the behavior and feelings of young people. Gantos has also written books with serious themes directed toward young adults. Many of these themes deal with friendship, jealousy, loneliness, and how to adapt to the adult world.
Gantos has written three popular series of books. The “Rotten Ralph” series of picture books deals with a misbehaving cat named Rotten Ralph. The series began with Rotten Ralph (1976). The “Jack Henry” series consists of autobiographical novels about the experiences of a boy as he moves from the fourth through the seventh grades. The series began with Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade (1994). The “Joey Pigza” series focuses on a boy who suffers from attention deficit disorder (ADD). ADD is a behavior problem in which people have unusual difficulty paying attention, sitting still, or controlling their impulses. The five-novel “Joey Pigza” series began with Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key (1998) and ended with The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza (2014). Gantos also wrote the young adult autobiographies Hole in My Life (2002) and its prequel, The Trouble in Me (2015), as well as adult novels. A prequel is a story that precedes a previously released book or film.
John Bryan Gantos, Jr., was born on July 2, 1951, in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. degree from Emerson College in Boston in 1976 and an M.A. degree from Emerson in 1984. Between 1978 and 1996, he taught creative writing at Brown University, Emerson, the University of New Mexico, and Vermont College. Since then, he has worked as a full-time writer and educational speaker.
