Jack Gantos

Bursting with practical tips and tricks, such as creating actual story-finding maps of your neighborhood, this book will help you build confidence and establish good writing habits as you learn to use a journal to snoop out plots full of action and emotion about yourself, your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your pets. As the author shows you how to shape your rough ideas, organize plots, and polish drafts to shiny perfection, he also shares...

The author relates how, as a young adult, he became a drug user and smuggler, was arrested, did time in prison, and eventually got out and went to college, all the while hoping to become a writer.

"Everything goes topsy-turvy for Joey as he becomes the man of the house, looking after his new baby brother, taking care of his troubled mother, and seeking out his missing father"--

"Fourteen-year-old Jack falls under the spell of a delinquent Florida neighbor and gets way more trouble than he bargained for"--

Sarah's cat Rotten Ralph tries to help her create a school project based on ancient Egypt, but he is more of a hindrance than a help.

"Ralph takes a swing through his family tree to find out why he's so rotten"--

Joey tries to keep his life from degenerating into total chaos when his mother sends him to be home-schooled with a hostile blind girl, his divorced parents cannot stop fighting, and his grandmother is dying of emphysema.

It is Valentine's Day and Rotten Ralph, a very, very nasty cat, is up to his rotten tricks.

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.