(2) 4-6 Gantos advises budding writers to keep journals as regularly as he has done since his youth. Using frequent anecdotes from his own life, he provides examples of what writing things down has allowed him to later shape into stories with snappy dialogue, action and emotion, and evolving characters. The result is a writing guide (complete with fountain-pen drawings and appended writing exercises) that is both practical and entertaining.

Reviewer: Shoshana Flax | Horn Book Magazine Issue: January, 2018

(2) YA By the summer before eighth grade, young Jack Gantos was a "drifty kid...easily led off course." Trying to be somebody else, he fell into the orbit of juvenile delinquent neighbor Gary Pagoda. This volume acts as a preface to Hole in My Life; readers of both books will experience the full arc of Jack's wild behavior, severe consequences, and, ultimately, his redemption.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2015

(1) 4-6 Left alone with his new baby brother, irrepressible Joey takes seriously his mother's admonition that he be "man of the house." His blind friend Olivia helps care for Carter Junior and fend off Joey's estranged and unhinged father's attempts to kidnap the baby. As in the four previous books, events are fast, furious, and frequently funny in this propulsively written final story.

Reviewer: Monica Edinger | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2014

(2) K-3 Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader series. Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. After finding an old photo album, Ralph visits his family. His mother treats him well, but the other relatives heap humiliation on him. Ralph realizes the reason he is so rotten is that his own family was rotten to him. The longer format serves Ralph well, allowing a more sophisticated story line to emerge. Lively tongue-in-cheek illustrations extend the action.

Reviewer: Robin L. Smith | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2014

(2) 4-6 Drawing imagery from Moby-Dick, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Frankenstein, Gantos employs gothic humor, scene-crafting mastery, and his Dead End in Norvelt protagonist Jack's querulous voice to offer a wild and challenging road-trip novel, murder mystery, meditation on American history, and love story all in one. The tale has as many twists and turns as those Tennessee back roads.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2013

(3) K-3 Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader series. Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. Ralph spends more time dreaming of glory than practicing, so instead of earning a spot on the baseball team, he's given the job of "cat boy." In true Rotten Ralph spirit, the story's message never gets too message-y, thanks largely to impish embellishments--as when Ralph spits in all the players' new gloves to soften them--in both art and text.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann

(1) 4-6 In 1962 Norvelt, Pennsylvania (a town founded by Eleanor Roosevelt), Jack's summer job keeps him busy. Jack's work--typing up obituaries for his arthritic neighbor--chronicles the history of the community: a "museum of freaks." There's more than laugh-out-loud gothic comedy here. This is a richly layered semi-autobiographical tale, an ode to a time and place, to history and the power of reading.

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2011

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. Ralph awakens with the kitty equivalent of a hangover after a night of carousing. The vet's dire diagnosis: "Your cat has used up eight of his nine lives." Rubel's sly caricatures recount how each life got starved, shaken, and snowballed away in previous books. Will Ralph now adhere to Sarah's prescription of an extra-cautious ninth life? His fans already know the answer.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2009

(2) 4-6 Joey's father is back, talking big about his moneymaking dreams. Joey's parents have reunited and are determined to drag Joey into their deluded plans. The protagonist remains a lovable antihero trying to make the best of the doomed situation. Readers new to this world will find it bizarre, but fans will be glad to spend time with their favorite wired kid.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2007

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. After a night of foraging in the neighborhood trash cans, Rotten Ralph wakes up with a tummy ache in this cautionary tale about eating junk food. Four short chapters give beginning readers appropriate starting and stopping places, and the illustrations not only parallel the text but also help define a few phrases ("furry fish") not often found in first-grade workbooks.

Reviewer: Betty Carter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2004

(2) 4-6 In this prequel to the four books about Jack Henry and his tragicomic, itinerant family, young Jack's honest, dryly humorous first-person narration chronicles his fourth-grade year. The novel opens with the family's move from Pennsylvania to North Carolina and with Jack's worries about making friends. Jack's weird predicaments are both familiar and fantastic; laugh-out-loud scenes have a tendency to sneak up on you.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2003

(2) K-3 Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader series. Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. Ralph is unwilling to work to win prizes at the carnival, and he scoffs at perfect cousin Percy's constant practicing. Naturally, Ralph shames himself. Percy wins a slew of prizes, which prompts Ralph to devise a scheme, a dangerous proposition. Ralph's misbehavior is as entertaining as it is reprehensible. Illustrated with Rubel's deadpan pictures, this is a prize for newly independent readers, for whom "practice makes perfect" indeed.

Reviewer: Betty Carter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: May, 2002

(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

(2) 4-6 In this final book about Joey Pigza, his mom has sent him to be homeschooled with a mean blind girl (think Rotten Ralph with a white cane) and her super-religious mother; his dad is tearing around, jealous of Joey's mom's new boyfriend; and Grandma is back, camped out on the couch behind a plastic shower curtain. Once again, Joey is a distinctive antihero who makes an immensely entertaining, remarkably lucid narrator.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 2002

(2) K-3 Rotten Ralph Rotten Reader series. Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. Youngsters who enjoyed Rotten Ralph in his picture book outings can now encounter the fractious feline in a beginning reader. Sarah, Ralph's long-suffering owner, has to do a project on ancient Egypt, and Ralph's "help" is of little value. The narrative unobtrusively includes many facts about Egypt. Rubel's illustrations parallel the story and also reflect its underlying frenzy.

Reviewer: Betty Carter | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2001

(1) 4-6 Joey Pigza is on a more even keel, thanks to "good meds" for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Spending the summer with his father, a bigger version of his "wired" self, Joey finds himself ill-prepared to cope with his self-destructive and alcoholic parent. As in Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, the story's tension and sadness are tempered by Joey's often humorous, sometimes hilarious, narrative.

Reviewer: Kitty Flynn | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 2000

(3) K-3 Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. The devil-red cat is in rare form at Sarah's aunt's wedding, where he knocks hats off guests, trips the ring-bearer, dangles a mouse between bride and groom as they lean in for the kiss, and performs other obnoxious stunts. Once again, Gantos's sly text and Rubel's psychedelically colored line drawings indulge readers with Ralph's naughty idea of fun.

Reviewer: Christine M. Heppermann

(2) 4-6 Jack Henry's back--in a laugh-out-loud read inhabited by killer cats, giant tapeworms, and escaped convicts. This latest installment of Jack's saga will appeal to the many fans of the series, and it can provide inspiration to young writers who will see how Gantos mined his own early school years for stories to embellish (at least we hope they're embellished).

Reviewer: Dean Schneider | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1999

(1) 4-6 In this rollercoaster of a ride, ingenuously and breathlessly narrated by young Joey Pigza, readers are treated to an up-close and personal introduction to life with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder--or being "wired," as Joey puts it. His forthright, kidlike commentary has an unaffected charm in this compelling tragicomedy.

Reviewer: Jennifer M. Brabander | Horn Book Magazine Issue: November, 1998

(2) K-3 Illustrated by Nicole Rubel. Ralph experiences the ugly but familiar feelings of jealousy and selfishness when he fears he may have to share Sarah with new school friends. 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. Rubel's illustrations depict a consistently naughty feline, yet manage to make him believable whether worried and abandoned or loved and purring.

Reviewer: Elizabeth S. Watson | Horn Book Magazine Issue: September, 1998