Jack Gantos

Joey, who is still taking medication to keep him from getting too wired, goes to spend the summer with the hard-drinking father he has never known and tries to help the baseball team he coaches win the championship

On an unseasonably warm Easter Sunday, a young girl named Ivy discovers a chilling secret in the basement of the Rumbaugh pharmacy across the street from the hotel where she lives with her mother. The discovery reveals a disturbing side to the eccentric lives of family friends Abner and Adolph Rumbaugh, known throughout their small western Pennsylvania town simply as the Twins. It seems that Ab and Dolph have been compelled by a powerful mutual...

“I’m a brand-new man with a brand-new plan.”
Joey Pigza is knocked for a loop when his good-for-nothing dad shows up on his doorstep as a recycled person. After a lucky lotto win, Carter Pigza truly believes he’s somebody else. He’s even renamed himself Charles Heinz–and he insists that Joey and his mother join his happy Heinz family plan.
“My head felt like it was full of bees, and they were busy in...

In the historic town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack Gantos spends the summer of 1962 grounded for various offenses until he is assigned to help an elderly neighbor with a most unusual chore involving the newly dead, molten wax, twisted promises, Girl Scout cookies, underage driving, lessons from history, typewriting, and countless bloody noses

When his father rejoins the Navy and moves the family to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, ten-year-old Jack becomes confused by a crush on his teacher, contradictory advice from his parents, and a very strange neighbor

Jack's diary helps him deal with his problems which include dog-eating alligators, a terror for an older sister, a younger brother who keeps breaking parts of himself, and next-door neighbors who are really weird

After an explosion, a new crime by an old murderer, and the sad passing of the founder of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Jack accompanies his slightly mental elderly mentor, Miss Volker, on a cross-country run as she pursues the oddest of outlaws

Sarah takes her rotten cat Ralph to school for Show and Tell and he behaves terribly, as usual, by spoiling everyone's show

When the veterinarian determines that Sarah's cat has used up eight of his nine lives, will the high-spirited feline finally stop misbehaving?

In this first in a series of Rotten Ralph readers, Jack Gantos reads his tale of the irrepressible cat with a penchant for disaster. When Ralph tries to help Sarah with her class project on ancient Egypt, he wreaks havoc first at the library and then continues his assistance" at home. As usual, Ralph overcomes his rotten-ness and ultimately rescues Sarah's project by dressing up as the Sphinx. Listeners will not only learn interesting tidbits about...