Writer Jack Gantos can relate to kids of all ages. The awardwinning author has written books for preschoolers to young adults and adults, which makes him a perfect fit for the annual Vineyard-wide school program which brings authors and illustrators to the Island for a series of presentations.
Stephanie Dryer, West Tisbury school library media center director, organizes the yearly visits. She has arranged for Mr. Gantos to visit the Island on four separate occasions, and is thrilled to have him coming back this year. She became acquainted with the author in 2002 when she saw him speak at a conference of the Massachusetts Library Association.
“I knew he’d be able to maintain an audience from pre-K up,” Ms. Dreyer said. “He gears the presentation to each age group. That’s why I can have him back every three years.”
Mr. Gantos has been honored with numerous awards, including the Newbery Medal and the Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction.
Mr. Gantos visited four of the Island’s elementary schools and Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School this week. Although he caters each visit to a particular age group, the message is always the same: encouraging creativity among young people.
“He promotes literacy and the writing process,” Ms. Dryer said. “He focuses on writing and the importance of keeping a journal.”
With kids from kindergarten to grade three, Mr. Gantos focuses on the development of a picture book. He uses his character, Rotten Ralph, star of 20 picture books, to take kids through the literary elements of storyboarding.
Mr. Gantos started his professional career in 1976 with the publication of “Rotten Ralph,” a picture book which tells the story of a bright red cat who enjoys playing mean practical jokes on his human family. As with all of Mr. Gantos’ books, the Rotten Ralph books are full of humor and quirky stories, featuring a far-from-perfect protagonist.
Mr. Gantos is equally imaginative in his books for older readers. The Joey Pigza series for kids ages 10 and older features a wisecracking kid whose struggles with ADHD continually get him into trouble, until he finds ways to deal with his condition without losing his sense of playfulness. There are five books in this series.
In the semi-autobiographical Jack Henry series, readers follow the protagonist on a series of crazy adventures as his nomadic family moves from town to town.
For students in grades 4 through 6, Mr. Gantos works with kids on journaling, which the author started doing as a young boy and continued religiously throughout his teens and early 20s. He draws on his numerous notebooks and journals for his books.
With junior high and high school kids, Mr. Gantos does a creative writing workshop and talks about the influences on his development as a writer.
Mr. Gantos’ book “Hole in My Life,” which won Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert honors, is an autobiographical account of his teens and early adulthood. Mr. Gantos finished up high school living by himself in a rooming house in Fort Lauderdale, far from his family, who were settled in the Virgin Islands at the time. When he was offered a large sum of money to help out with a drug-smuggling operation, the author saw it as a chance to fulfill his dream of college and a writing career. Instead, he wound up in prison in New York State. Mr. Gantos pulls no punches describing his time behind bars, where violence, rape, and drugs were harsh realities. The book is gritty, but also full of humor. Mr. Gantos is skilled at creating memorable characters and writing with equal amounts of wit and poetic grace. “Hole in My Life” is a great read for adults as well as young adults.
The book includes numerous references to writers ranging from Kerouac and Kesey to Homer and Dostoevsky, as the youthful Mr. Gantos compares his various predicaments to those of some of his fictional heroes.
“Hole in My Life” serves as an engrossing cautionary tale, an inspiration for aspiring young writers, and a fast-paced, well-written account for adults. For older readers, Mr. Gantos has also written another memoir and two books of fiction.
Mr. Gantos is as talented a speaker as he is a writer, and his presentations are sure to have captivated the kids of Martha’s Vineyard. “His stories are over the top, and he presents them in such an animated, hysterical way,” Ms. Dryer said. “The kids just glom onto him. The parents do too. It never gets old.”