(4) K-3 Authors Kids Love series. These biographies tell about the authors' early lives and the experiences that inspired them to become writers. The volumes are based on 2005 interviews with the subjects, who provided many of the books' photos. Readers may find the sidebars and large photo captions more distracting than helpful, but the books do provide plenty of information about the authors and their writing processes. Reading list, websites. Glos., ind. Review covers these Authors Kids Love titles: Bruce Coville and Jack Gantos.

Reviewer: Lisa Catherine Findlay

(1) YA Gantos begins this affectingly candid self-examination with a mug shot taken in 1972, after he'd already spent a year in jail for smuggling drugs. A good portion of the memoir takes place before his incarceration, when he was a teenager adrift, desperate to become a writer but sure he had no material. Without glamorizing his criminal past, Gantos shows how prison made him realize he had had plenty to say all along.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2002