Summary
Writer Jack Gantos describes his life before becoming a writer. While his life seemed fairly ordinary at first he led a more extreme life as he became an adolescent and into his early adult years. While living on his own in an effort to finish high school this ambitious and aspiring writer was offered drugs. This choice led him to a few more bad choices, including sailing a boat full of drugs with a drug dealer north to sell illegally. After finding himself in prison Jack learns the error of his ways and how he should begin writing.
Bibliographic Citation
Gantos, J. (2002). Hole in my life. New York: Farrar, Straus an Giroux.
Personal Impressions
Jack Gantos opened my eyes to the world of drug trafficing and the pressures many of our students are struggling with. I have never read any books written by Gantos. After reading this book I am very interested in seeing how his rough adolescence influenced him to write for children. While following the though process of the writer this book was a bit difficult for me. The characters written about are all male, making this a great for older boys.
Reviews
Michael Cart (Booklist, Apr. 1, 2002 (Vol. 98, No. 15))
Jack Gantos' riveting memoir of the 15 months he spent as a young man in federal prison for drug smuggling is more than a harrowing, scared-straight confession: it is a beautifully realized story about the making of a writer. As Gantos himself notes: "It [prison] is where I went from thinking about becoming a writer, to writing." His examination of the process--including his unsparing portrayal of his fears, failings, and false starts--is brilliant and breathtaking in its candor and authenticity. Particularly fascinating is his generous use of literary allusions to everything from Baudelaire to Billy Budd, which subtly yet richly dramatize how he evolved from a reader who became a character in the books he was reading to a writer and a character in his own life story. Gantos' spare narrative style and straightforward revelation of the truth have, together, a cumulative power that will capture not only a reader's attention but also empathy and imagination. This is great for every aspiring writer and also a wonderful biography for teens struggling to discover their deepest, truest selves. Category: Books for Middle Readers--Nonfiction. 2002, Farrar, $16. Gr. 8-up. Starred Review
Judy Silverman (Children's Literature)
Jack Gantos, widely read author of the "Rotten Ralph" series of picture books and the Joey Pigza books, among others, did not become an author easily. He feels that he always wanted to write, and that he would become a famous author, but as a young man he never quite got around to putting his words on paper. His family moved around a lot, he didn't feel connected to anyone, and he didn't really care for school. Everything changed in 1971, when he made a really bad choice. For $10,000 (what seemed like a fortune) he agreed to help sail a ship from the Virgin Islands to New York City. An easy job, but the ship was loaded with hashish. Gantos didn't realize that Federal agents had been tracking them nearly all the way. At the age of twenty, he was sent to prison for six years. At first he didn't see any way to change his ways or his life-style, nor did he see anything that would give him reason to change. But he did want to finish high school, and was fortunate in finding a teacher who encouraged him and convinced him that the only way one becomes a writer is by writing, and the only way for a writer to get his work published is to write well. It was not an easy life that Gantos had chosen, but he was determined to succeed, and eventually he did. The book is well put together, and is written in a conversational style that is easy to read without talking down to the reader. Prison lifeis presented as the horror that it is. An encouraging look at a terrible part of life, and how this remarkable young man was capable of overcoming disadvantages and becoming what he had always wanted to be--a writer. 2002, Farrar Straus and Giroux, $16.00. Ages 12 to 16.
Kirkus (Kirkus Reviews, February 15, 2002 (Vol. 70, No. 4))
We didn't so much arrive at our destinations as aim and crash into them like kamikaze yachtsmen." So Gantos describes himself as a 20-year-old about to be arrested and imprisoned for smuggling two thousand pounds of hashish from St. Croix to New York City. Young Jack seems to share with his fictional characters-Joey Pigza and Jack Henry-a blithe disregard for the consequences of wild behavior. Readers follow him from a seedy motel run by the great-great-granddaughter of Davy Crockett to a Keystone Kops adventure on the sea, from a madcap escape from FBI and Treasury agents to his arrest and trial, represented by his lawyer, Al E. Newman. This true tale of the worst year in the author's life will be a big surprise for his many fans. Gantos has the storyteller's gift of a spare prose style and a flair for the vivid simile: Davy has "brown wrinkled skin like a well-used pirate map"; a prisoner he met was "nervous as a dragonfly"; another strutted "like a bowlegged bulldog." This is a story of mistakes, dues, redemption, and finally success at what he always wanted to do: write books. The explicit descriptions of drug use and prison violence make this a work for older readers. Not the usual "How I Became A Writer" treatise, it is an honest, utterly compelling, and life-affirming chronicle of a personal journey for older teens and adults. 2002, Farrar Straus & Giroux, $16.00. Category: Nonfiction. Ages 13 up. Starred Review. © 2002 Kirkus Reviews/VNU eMedia, Inc. All rights reserved.
Thomas Nigel Hames (The ALAN Review, Spring/Summer 2002 (Vol. 29, No. 3))
In this bittersweet autobiography, the future author Jack Gantos is looking for away off his homeland of St. Croix, an island full of racial turmoil and personal stagnation. He wants to go to the United States and try his hand at college so he can fulfill his dreams of becoming a writer. One day, the opportunity of a lifetime lands in his lap, and he finds that he cannot say "no." All he has to do is help smuggle 2,000 pounds of hash on a boat from St. Croiz to New York. For this, he could receive ten thousand dollars, and his ticket to school. Desperate to leave, Gantos falls prey to this crime of convenience, and as fate would have it, he lands in prison. This surprising book recounts the popular YA author's late-teen life, his subsequent arrest and imprisonment. It is frank, harsh, and beautifully truthful at times -- especially about life in prison. Above all, this is the story of a young writer trying to find inspiration for his work. Ultimately, he finds the greatest inspiration within himself. Category: Autobiography. YA--Young Adult. 2002, Farrar Straus & Giroux, 200 pp., $16.00. Ages young adult.Orlando, Florida
Deborah Stevenson (The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, May 2002 (Vol. 55, No. 9))
Gantos, already an author of fictionalized autobiography (in the Jack books, such as Heads or Tails, BCCB 7/94), turns here to acknowledged autobiography. He first tells of his aimless late-teen years, where he largely lived apart from his parents, read writers he desperately wanted to emulate, and grew increasingly restless. After moving down to St. Croix, an island paradise increasingly torn by racial strife, to work for his father, he gets a ticket not just out but to New York, in the form of a $10,000 offer to crew a boat laden with hash from the Virgin Islands to New York. The journey is surreal but the consequences are stunningly concrete--Gantos is apprehended and sentenced to federal prison, where he spends eighteen months. Gantos writes with his usual energy and crispness, and there’s a devastating low-key precision to his observations about the situation, his acquaintances and cohorts, and himself (“Dad’s keen eye for spotting criminals of all stripes was impressive. But it wasn’t perfect. He never pegged me for being one of them”). He paints his young self as realistically clueless (Gantos poured out all his thoughts about drug smuggling and the ethics thereof into the ship’s log book, which was, of course, used against him in his trial), but he’s never retroactively indulgent, instead keeping a keen eye on the issue of culpability. While the book brings Midnight Express to mind (though Gantos fortunately got a job as an x-ray tech that kept him out of the violence of the main prison population), there’s a closer kinship to Walter Dean Myers’ Bad Boy (BCCB 9/01); like the young Myers, the young Gantos is reading voraciously, trying to get to the writing he longs to do, and drifting beyond the boundaries. Readers will be relieved and glad that he found his way back, and high-schoolers who devoured the Jack books in their middle-grade youth will savor the acerbic exploration of their author’s formative time. Review Code: R -- Recommended. (c) Copyright 2002, The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 2002, Farrar, 200p, $16.00. Grades 9 up.
Loveta Campbell (The Lorgnette - Heart of Texas Reviews (Vol. 15, No. 4))
Since early youth, all Jack Gantos has wanted to do is write. His desire is to go to college and study writing skills. Hampered by environment and funds, he seeks ways to make this dream come true. Gantos openly shares with the reader how his unwise judgement and his desire for finances lead him to agree to help sail a hashish smuggling boat from St. Croix to New York City. This leads to his capture and a prison sentence. Through the frightening and unfamiliar time of his incarceration, he never loses his desire to go to college and write. Gantos relates the incarceration experiences in crude, raw, and graphic language. Some of the content is spine chilling but honest. The author gives a clear picture of consequences to youth who may be contemplating unwise choices. Jack Gantos has written several children's books. Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key was a National Book Award finalist and Hole in My Life and Joey Pigza Loses Control are both Newbery Honor Books. Nonfiction (813 or biography). Grades 11 and up. 2002, Farrar Straus Giroux, 199p, $16.00. Ages 16 up.
James Blasingame (VOYA, June 2002 (Vol. 25, No. 2))
Gantos, successful author of books for children and young adults, ventures outside his accustomed venue with this autobiographical work. At the age of nineteen, Gantos helped to smuggle one ton of hashish from St. Croix to New York City, and as a result of being caught, served two years of imprisonment in a federal penitentiary in Ashland, Kentucky. Throughout the first few chapters, the saga seems an extension of the Jack Henry stories. The tone soon changes, however, from the comical eccentricity of Gantos's later teenage years to the tension and paranoia of drug smuggling, and finally the fear and despair of prison life. The reader suffers through each agonizing and vulnerable moment until Jack is released and starts a new life, fulfilling his dream of becoming a writer. Children of the sixties, whose youthful indiscretions turned, or nearly turned, into more disasters, will read this book cover-to-cover without stopping. Even young readers without relevant experience will find their hearts racing and their blood pressure rising as the frightening events of his story unfold. Gantos's honesty and directness in describing the whole experience make reading this book a gut-wrenching experience. Gritty details make it a better fit for older high school students and adults, and teachers who have used Gantos's previous books will find it especially intriguing. VOYA CODES: 5Q 4P S A/YA (Hard to imagine it being any better written; Broad general YA appeal; Senior High, defined as grades 10 to 12; Adult-marketed book recommended for Young Adults). 2002, Farrar Straus Giroux, 208p, $16. Ages 15 to Adult.
Elementary Library Uses
This would be an excellent book to suggest to students struggling with peer pressure or drug abuse. It would also be great to pair some of Gantos writing for children with this biography for high school students in an author study.
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