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Summary
Summary
This fiery autobiographical novel captures a pivotal week or two in the life of fourteen-year-old Jack Gantos, as the author reveals the moment he began to slide off track as a kid who in just a few years would find himself locked up in a federal penitentiary for the crimes portrayed in the memoir Hole in My Life . Set in the Fort Lauderdale neighborhood of his family's latest rental home, The Trouble in Me opens with an explosive encounter in which Jack first meets his awesomely rebellious older neighbor, Gary Pagoda, just back from juvie for car theft. Instantly mesmerized, Jack decides he will do whatever it takes to be like Gary. As a follower, Jack is eager to leave his old self behind, and desperate for whatever crazy, hilarious, frightening thing might happen next. But he may not be as ready as he thinks when the trouble in him comes blazing to life.
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Author Notes
Jack Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania on July 2, 1951. He received a BFA and a MA from Emerson College. While in college, he and an illustrator friend, Nicole Rubel, began working on picture books. After a series of rejections, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. His other books include Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book, and Dead End in Norvelt, which won the 2012 Newbery Medal. His memoir, Hole in My Life, won the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert Honors. Jack's follow-up to Hole in My Life is The Trouble in Me He also teaches courses in children's book writing and children's literature. He dev.eloped the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College and the Vermont College M.F.A. program for children's book writers.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Gantos reflects on his early teenage years, a key period of time that led him down the life of crime and prison he captured in his previous memoir, Hole in My Life. This book recounts a two-week period when the author was 14 years old and first started hanging out with Gary Pagoda, a notorious juvenile delinquent in the Fort Lauderdale neighborhood where Gantos and his family lived. Gantos provides the voice in the audio edition to the detriment of his story: his focus throughout is on the enunciation of the words rather than the emotional components of the story. He seems too intent on getting the words right. As a result, his performance falls flat and never allows the listener to settle in and get absorbed into the story. Ages 12-up. A Farrar, Straus and Giroux hardcover. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
Gantos first came clean in the autobiographical Hole in My Life (rev. 5/02), in which he described how a misspent youth led him to a prison sentence for drug trafficking. In The Trouble in Me, he recounts some pivotal episodes of his earlier adolescence that show how making terrible choice after terrible choice led him off course. As usual, Gantos does the narrating honors with this audiobook, and his in-character relish when describing acts of early-teenage depravity (fires feature prominently) is well suited to this cautionary tale -- minus any trace of preachiness -- about the dangers of not knowing oneself. nell beram (c) Copyright 2016. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Know thyself, Alexander Pope advises us, and Gantos does that in spades in this insightful prequel to his award-winning memoir Hole in My Life (2002). Jack is 14 on the fateful day he meets his mysterious older neighbor Gary Pagoda and, enchanted, quickly becomes his acolyte. However, there's trouble ahead, for Gary is the kind of kid parents warn their children against. But Jack doesn't care. Bored, lonely, self-hating, and sad, he is on fire with the desire to be like Gary or, better yet, to be Gary. But in seeking to emulate him, Jack's behavior takes a precipitous turn for the worse. Will he flameout in the process of transforming himself? One of the tools the spellbinding Gantos uses in this incendiary fictionalized memoir is simile and metaphor. Fire is a recurring motif (it's what brings the boys together and informs their developing relationship): meat drippings that Jack grills crisp like someone burning at the stake, while mosquitoes are winged formations of humming hypodermics. Abundant style and substance make this an irresistible cautionary tale that will doubtlessly drive eager readers back to Hole in My Life for further adventures. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Gantos has won a Newbery Medal, Printz Honor, Sibert Honor, and countless hearts. Readers will want to know how he became one of a kind.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2015 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
jack gantos and his publisher encourage you to think of "The Trouble in Me" as a prequel to his celebrated memoir "Hole in My Life" - and I encourage you to ignore them. The books are so different in tone, in what they strive for and what they achieve, that they could meet at a party, get drunk and go home together without ever knowing that they're cousins. Instead, let's consider Gantos's novel as spiritual kin to another new Y.A. novel from a highly decorated pro: Gary D. Schmidt's "Orbiting Jupiter." Here are two books about the perilous moment in a boy's life when he is so desperate to define himself - so open to influence - that just getting to know a troubled older kid is like walking into a storm. "The Trouble in Me" is a comic cautionary tale set in Fort Lauderdale in 1964, and concerns the darkening friendship between the author's fictionalized 14-year-old alter ego and his new neighbor, a violent delinquent named Gary Pagoda. At the outset, lazy, daydreamy Jack empties a can of lighter fluid onto the grill for his dad's surprise party and unleashes an "Old Testament fireball." It's a funny, raucous sequence, even if it's dampened by the author's insistence that we understand the symbolism - this is a baptism by fire, and young Jack will never be the same - and by a traffic jam of images: "The thrusting flames stood out like blood-red bayonets of molten steel. ... Staring into them set the canyons of my mind on fire and charred the weedy debris of dead thoughts." Gary Pagoda, who's been relieving himself in a nearby canal, thinks Jack's fireball is hysterical. For the rest of this slender novel, he draws Jack into increasingly dangerous stunts and, ultimately, into a misguided "Endless Love"-style quest to win back his own girlfriend. Jack is utterly devoted, though Gary is cold and cruel and slaps him just for asking questions. What Gantos is attempting here is to explain how he turned into the 19-year-old from "Hole in My Life" - a guy so suggestible that he helped crew a boat full of drugs and sailed himself directly into prison. But "Hole in My Life" was a sobering memoir with the full weight of truth. "The Trouble in Me" is an often giddy entertainment, and the humor can feel queasily at odds with the subject matter. Still, the book has an unsettling power. You have to admire what a gutsy hybrid the author is aiming for: a cautionary romp about a kid who signs his life over to a sociopath. Schmidt's "Orbiting Jupiter" is warmer and more reassuring, though it has its share of tragedy. Our narrator is a 12-year-old Maine farm boy also named Jack, as it happens. And this Jack also befriends an angry outsider: his new foster brother, Joseph, who shows signs of physical and emotional abuse. Early on - when Joseph storms off the school bus and walks in the subfreezing cold because the driver is being nosy - Jack gets off, too, in solidarity. So immediately we know that Jack is equipped with a shining heart and that far from being led astray, he will try to help his wounded friend heal. Joseph has much to heal from: Though he's only 13, he has a daughter somewhere, a girl named Jupiter he has never been allowed to see. He frequently scans the sky for the planet she is named after because that's as close as he may ever get. Schmidt is best known for historical Y.A., like the Vietnam-era Long Island of "The Wednesday Wars." "Orbiting Jupiter" is set today, though it might as well be another century, because no one seems ever to have plugged anything into anything else. The timelessness of the book can feel implausible, even for rural Maine. Still, like Gantos, Schmidt has the courage of his convictions. He has written a novel about pain and bonding - a spare book scrubbed clean of 21st-century distractions. And he smuggles in some poetry as Jack joins Joseph on his quest for closure: "It stayed cold that Monday, and... there were snowflakes in the air that afternoon again, drifting like they didn't care if they landed." "The Trouble in Me" and "Orbiting Jupiter" are about boys who get blown through the air themselves. The suspense in reading, as in life, is in wondering if they will land safely - or at all. JEFF GILES is a former deputy editor of Entertainment Weekly. His first Y.A. novel will be published in 2017.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Before there was life behind bars at the federal prison, there was life behind a chain-link fence on his Florida city lot, where Jack, at age 14, saw his future. On the other side stands car thief Gary Pagoda, recently released from juvie, a boy who is "everything [Jack] had never been" but who in short order Jack decides is everything he wants to become. Each reckless antic (shoplifting, kamikaze-esque "Pagoda Olympics," escalating pyromania) aimed at creating a new identity leaves a bigger void. Read admirably well by the author, the only narrator who could do this tale justice. -VERDICT This poignant story is about learning one of life's lessons the hard way: the most powerful lies are the ones you tell yourself. ["Gantos's characteristic humor and keen observation of the fragile teen psyche combine with heartbreaking authenticity in this unflinching look at how a good kid can easily go down a wrong path": SLJ 10/15 starred review of the Farrar book.]-Cheryl Preisendorfer, Twinsburg City Schools, OH © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A misbegotten effort to reinvent himself leads young "Jack" to burn his notebooks and clothes, though not quite his bridges, in Gantos' latest burst of confessional fiction. This summer episode falls in chronology shortly after Jack's Black Book (1997). Dissatisfied with his life and looking for a new model, 14-year-old Jack fixes with characteristic lack of good judgment on next-door-neighbor Gary Pagodaa leather-jacketed older teen fresh out of juvie. Gary turns out to be a dab hand not only at testing his new amanuensis with life-threatening backyard games, but also hot-wiring cars and other thrillingly illegal amusements. Reflected in both jacket cover and chapter titles, fire or fireworks play a recurring role in events as Jack tries to make a clean break with his past by torching both his childhood journals and his clothes (replacing the latter with shoplifted goods). Jack's narrative has a Wimpy Kid tone and appeal as, looking back, he's well-aware of his own youthful fecklessness and almost eager to point out where he went wrong. But, not very surprisingly for readers who have been following his checkered career, he turns out to be a miserable failure at real evil. Readers will laugh, possibly uneasily, at Jack's reckless antics and lack of impulse control, but they will probably also sympathize with his deep itch to make a change. (preface, afterword) (Historical fiction. 13-15) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.