Frank Carlson Library

According to his new motto- A WRITER'S JOB IS TO TURN HIS WORST EXPERIENCES INTO MONEY- Jack Gantos's alter ego Jack Henry is going to be filty rich even before he gets out of junior high, for his life is filled with the worst experiences imaginable. For instance, in the course of the few months covered in this closing cycle of interlinked stories, Jack is humiliated by a gorgeous synchronized swimmer, gets a tattoo the size of an ant on his big toe,...

"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"--

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.

In his family's new rental home on a down-at-the heels street in sun-beaten Miami -- with dog-eating alligators in the canal out back, a dangerously attractive girl across the road, and the unhinged Pagoda family next door -- fourteen-year-old Jack is adrift, losing a sense of who he is and what he's all about. Which is why he ends up trying to morph himself into someone he's not, that someone being sixteen-year-old Gary Pagoda, a.k.a. Scary Gary,...