Jack Gantos

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Iowa City Public Library’s first Author in Residence, Jack Gantos, will talk about his books, his life and his creative process as part of the Library’s celebration of five years in its new facility in June 2009. He is the celebrated author of “Joey Pigza Loses Control,” a Newbery Honor Book. He is also the author of the popular picture books about Rotten Ralph, and “Jack's Black Book,” the latest in his acclaimed series of semi-autobiographical story collections featuring his alter ego, Jack Henry. His publications can take a reader from cradle to grave, from picture books and middle-grade fiction to novels for young adults and adults. Gantos lives with his wife and daughter in Boston, Mass.

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS WITH JACK GANTOS

1. How did you and Nicole Rubel come up with the idea to create books about a nice girl with a rotten feline? And will Rotten Ralph ever learn how to be a nice kitty?

Rotten Ralph came along after a fair amount of failure -- the kind of good failure you learn from. Nicole and I were both in college when we began to collaborate on picture books (she was in art school and I was getting a degree in creative writing). We teamed up and right away I wrote some stories which were not very good because I was being too timid and cautious. I was always attracted to books with wild, brash, dynamic characters -- but it seems that when I sat down to write I must have been taken over by something like stage-fright. I began to write sweet books--books that were nice, and lovely, and thoughtful, and saccharine -- because this is what I thought most publishers would accept for children. However, all of these books were rejected, one after the other, and as the rejections pointed out some of my short comings, my frustration level began to erode my stage-fright and I was ready to try anything.

I had a cat. It was a lousy, no-good, sociopathic animal that didn't like me, or anyone who entered its small world. It scratched me, my clothes, my friends -- and generally spread havoc around my small apartment. So one day, instead of writing a sweet story, I wrote the story of this cat's life. It was a wild, thirty-page, single-spaced, story that really cut loose. It was beyond rotten. It was psychotic. But it was funny, too. And so I began to boil the manuscript down. I added Sarah because I needed to balance Ralph's rotten qualities against those of someone who represented unconditional love.

Nicole and I both worked on the story and worked on the look of Ralph. It was a fun collaboration --getting just the right text to launch just the perfect illustration. Finally we completed the dummy book and took it around to the local publishers. Two publishers turned it down, but Walter Lorraine at Houghton Mifflin liked it. He didn't purchase it right away, but first had many suggestions. Nicole and I worked every day on the story and art -- we bounced ideas off each other and created dummy after dummy until finally Walter bought the book. I think we wore him down.

I was very lucky. Nicole and I met at a costume party. I was dressed as a large white rabbit. I had been working forty hour weeks during college on top of my studies and didn't have it in me to make my own costume. I went to a rental place and all they had left was the rabbit. I took it, thinking I could always tell people I was the white rabbit from Alice in Wonderland. Then Nicole showed up dressed like Alice in a Victorian frock. We met, talked about what we were doing in school, and decided that we had some interests in common. She wanted to illustrate, I wanted to write, and so we thought the picture book was the perfect form for our talents.

2. Why did Joey Pigza really swallow the key? And what do you think of society's current approach to kids who have attention deficit disorder and/or hyperactivity symptoms?

Honestly, I wasn't like Joey. I didn't swallow a key (though I saw a kid do it for a buck), nor did I share Joey's family situation. He is a character who I have known, and observed, and then formed. I do think I share something with him, and perhaps others do to, which is that often my mind is so entirely unfocused it seems inside my head ideas are just caroming around like hockey pucks. But I assume everyone is like that. We all want better concentration. We all want greater focus. But that doesn't mean we are all hyperactive.

I knew kids like Joey. I moved a lot in my life -- you know, ten schools in twelve years -- so I was always a kid on the social fringe. And a lot of kids like Joey ended up on the social fringe because, for one reason or another, they couldn't seem to manage enduring friendships. I found these kids interesting. They were smart, clever, full of mischief and fun. Sure they may have gotten in trouble a bit more, but they didn't seem dangerous as much as they were revved up full of ideas. I was a bit on the shy side as a kid so hanging with these guys was perfect for me.

Parts of any Joey novel are fun to write--where I can drop into his character and begin to riff with his thoughts and get up a head of linguistic steam--that is fun to write. But like all the books, he is a genuine character, so I have to make certain that he isn't just a herky-jerky word-spewing puppet but a real flesh-and-blood kid. So there is a great deal of careful work that goes into measuring and articulating his emotional responses to the actions around him, his circumstances, and his own actions, which sometimes appear long before his ability to put into words what he feels and what he has done. Like any book, it takes gross and fine language skills to make it work.

As for society's approach to dealing with kids with ADHD: I think it is a family issue before it is an issue for society in general. But in my experience, and I visit 40 schools per year, there is not a kid who has ADHD and is out of control who enjoys being that way. They want help. They need help, and they look toward their parents for that help. Empathetic parents respond by meeting the child's need.

3. How important is the use of a journal in your creative process?

Very important. I use two kinds. The first is my standard which I've used for the last 25 years: a small artist sketch book, black bound, no lines, about five inches tall, by three and a half across -- about post card size. The second is a bit fancier. It is a soft journal that folds up like a small wallet and fits in my front pocket. It's light and easy to carry with me everywhere I go. Of course I have about five different journals working at all times -- for various projects: picture books, ongoing novels, future ideas, life in general ... I generally write in a small journal on my lap, just as I did when I was a boy. I always write on small paper. I once wrote a novel on small post-it notes. I avoid large paper -- it takes way too long before you feel as if you've accomplished anything. I often find I write surprisingly good pieces in odd places--in restaurants, on trains, airplanes, bars, the dentist's waiting room, or while sitting in my car waiting for my daughter to get out of school.

I write something every day, even if it is a journal entry about what I had for dinner. And even when I travel, I write something in my journal about my trip. Tonight I travel to Zurich for a week of speaking at international schools and I'm sure I'll find plenty to write about. Plus I'm traveling with some book projects I'm working on so I'll have plenty to accomplish on the road--even though traveling really throws off my concentration for writing. I like consistency. So, if I had it my way, I'd be in bed by 10 p.m. and up at 5 a.m. working on first draft material before the world wakes up. Then I usually spend a couple hours -- 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. -- doing business calls and such -- after which I go to the Boston Athenaeum (a subscription library) from about noon to 5 p.m. Then I have a family dinner and I always put my daughter to bed so we can draw and write in her journal and read, and then I get into bed and check my email on my laptop and answer the important emails so I don't wake up thinking about them. I don't live in an ideal world, but I do manage to carve out sufficient time for reading and writing.

4. Is there a difference between how ideas for young adult and children's books come to you?

None. Ideas are very democratic. People are not. So it is important to be receptive to all ideas otherwise you will self censor and not remain receptive to ideas you are not necessarily looking for.

5. How close are the adventures of Jack Henry to your real childhood experiences?

First off, a good bit is true. And I don't write any of the stories unless the "germ" of the story is real. Did I break my brother's arm? Yes. Did my dog get eaten by an alligator? Yes. Did I make a coffin for my other dog after he fell in a hole and broke his neck? Yes. Did my sister lock me out of the house naked? Yes. Did my brother think he shot down a plane with his finger? Yes. But have I had to stretch the truth in places? Yes. The story lines are launched from a platform of truth, but then they have to be turned into good fiction, and that requires a different set of critical thoughts and talents. And so I set about constructing dialog, and events, and time lines, and settings that help enrich the story and strengthen and clarify the theme. Fortunately I had a rich childhood and lived in Western Pennsylvania, Cape Hatteras, Barbados, St. Lucia, Miami, Fort Lauderdale and Puerto Rico -- so I saw a lot of the world and wrote about it.

6. What was the hole in your life as described in your autobiography? And how did you change because of it? Do you ever have the opportunity to work directly with jail or prison inmates?

When I was a senior in high school I lived in a welfare motel in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. My parents had moved from Florida to Puerto Rico and I stayed in Florida in order to finish school, which I did. I was supposed to go to the University of Florida, but after a visit to the campus I decided it wasn't for me. It was just a football, beer-drinking extension of my high school years -- more like grade 13 than college. So I moved back home, which by then was St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands. I went to work for my dad in his construction company but the construction business went belly up because of racial strife, and then by chance I met up with some drug smugglers who eventually hired me to sail a boat to New York City. There were 2,000 pounds of hashish on the boat and I agreed to the sailing job, and it was quite an adventure. But it didn't turn out how I had imagined. The boat was busted in New York and I was captured and given a six year sentence and sent to a Federal prison. That was sobering. But after wallowing in self pity for a bit, I pulled myself together and began to write -- as being a writer is always what I had wanted to become. And ironically, while locked up in prison, I found the freedom to write, and gained a good bit of confidence in my ability to do so. From prison I applied to college and when I was accepted, the parole board let me out early. Needless to say, I didn't go back to prison -- that is until I began to speak to inmates about their writing and literature. Now I get into prisons quite often. It is not physically frightening to return. It is all emotional. I empathize with the inmates. I feel what they feel, which is exactly what I used to feel when I was a prisoner. The mix of fear, and hope, and confusion and anger and the desire for people of power to trust you again is overwhelming.

7. What are you working on now?

I'm working on a series of books set in Western PA, from when I was a boy. My home town, Norvelt, is named after Eleanor Roosevelt who came to Southwestern PA during the depression and saw how the farmers and coal miners were suffering. In response she established a town -- Norvelt -- which was built on bartering labor -- for instance, if you worked at the pants factory for so many hours then you were given so much labor credit which you could then trade/spend at the grocery store. No cash was involvedjust labor credit, which was more socialistic than capitalistic. It is interesting to me that the present economic downturn parallels the depression years, and as a result the Federal Government is now offering to purchase banks and buy bank dept in order to keep banks from going out of business. This practice is very socialistic.

All through college my grandmother sent me patches to sew on my jeans, and bags of dried beans. These were all very hard working people and their suffering and triumph deserves to be written about.

8. What information do you hope patrons in Iowa City will take home with them after participating in one of your sessions in June?

Everyone will arrive for a reason. Some want to write better books and so I will talk about writing forms and the essential elements of writing and how to access the publishing industry. Some just want the pure pleasure of wallowing in children's books. Some will arrive with their children in order to enjoy the stories, and writing instruction together. Some want to write autobiographical fiction. Some are lapsed writers who are looking to get jump started again. Some will be teachers who are looking for books to use with their students. Regardless of what they arrive needing, they will go away with something they can use.

I look forward to my work with the students and teachers, and to my involvement with the Public Library community. I'm a great supporter of the Public Library system. As it is carved into the walls of the Boston Public Library: THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE IS THE GREATEST SAFEGUARD OF DEMOCRACY.