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Jack Henry #3
Jack's Black Book: What Happens When You Flunk an IQ Test?
From the Newbery Medal–winning author of Dead End in Norvelt , the uproarious final volume of Jack Henry stories
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 syncronized swimmer, gets a tattoo the size of an ant on his big toe, flubs an IQ test and nearly fails wood shop, and has to dig up his dead dog not once but twice. And that's not the half of it!
At the close of this final book of semi-autobiographical stories, Jack may not end up rolling in dough, but he will prove once again "a survivor, an ‘everyboy' whose world may be wacko but whose heart and spirit are eminently sane" ( School Library Journal ).
This title has Common Core connections.
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 syncronized swimmer, gets a tattoo the size of an ant on his big toe, flubs an IQ test and nearly fails wood shop, and has to dig up his dead dog not once but twice. And that's not the half of it!
At the close of this final book of semi-autobiographical stories, Jack may not end up rolling in dough, but he will prove once again "a survivor, an ‘everyboy' whose world may be wacko but whose heart and spirit are eminently sane" ( School Library Journal ).
This title has Common Core connections.
176 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
3 people are currently reading
106 people want to read
About the author
Jack Gantos
81 books551 followersJack Gantos is an American author of children's books renowned for his portrayal of fictional Joey Pigza, a boy with ADHD, and many other well known characters such as Rotten Ralph, Jack Henry, Jack Gantos (memoirs) and others. Gantos has won a number of awards, including the Newbery, the Newbery Honor, the Scott O'Dell Award, the Printz Honor, and the Sibert Honor from the American Library Association, and he has been a finalist for the National Book Award.
Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania to son of construction superintendent John Gantos and banker Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos. The seeds for Jack Gantos' writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could write better than she could. Born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and raised in Barbados and South Florida, Mr. Gantos began collecting anecdotes in grade school and later gathered them into stories.
After his senior year in high school (where he lived in a welfare motel) he moved to a Caribbean island (St Croix) and began to train as a builder. He soon realized that construction was not his forté and started saving for college. While in St. Croix he met a drug smuggler and was offered a chance to make 10 000 dollars by sailing to New York with 2,000 pounds of hash. With an English eccentric captain on board they set off to the big city. Once there they hung out at the Chelsea hotel and Gantos carried on dreaming about college. Then, in Jacks own words, "The **** hit the fan" and the F.B.I. burst in on him. He managed to escape and hid out in the very same welfare motel he was living during high school. However, he saw sense and turned himself in. He was sentenced to six years in prison, which he describes in his novel -HOLE IN MY LIFE-. However, after a year and a half in prison he applied to college, was accepted. He was released from prison, entered college, and soon began his writing career.
He received his BFA and his MA both from Emerson College. While in college, Jack began working on picture books with an illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph. Mr. Gantos continued writing children's books and began teaching courses in children's book writing. He developed the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College in Boston. In 1995 he resigned his tenured position in order to further his writing career (which turned out to be a great decision).
He married art dealer Anne A. Lower on November 11, 1989. The couple has one child, Mabel, and they live in Boston, Massachusetts.
www.jackgantos.com
Gantos was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania to son of construction superintendent John Gantos and banker Elizabeth (Weaver) Gantos. The seeds for Jack Gantos' writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could write better than she could. Born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and raised in Barbados and South Florida, Mr. Gantos began collecting anecdotes in grade school and later gathered them into stories.
After his senior year in high school (where he lived in a welfare motel) he moved to a Caribbean island (St Croix) and began to train as a builder. He soon realized that construction was not his forté and started saving for college. While in St. Croix he met a drug smuggler and was offered a chance to make 10 000 dollars by sailing to New York with 2,000 pounds of hash. With an English eccentric captain on board they set off to the big city. Once there they hung out at the Chelsea hotel and Gantos carried on dreaming about college. Then, in Jacks own words, "The **** hit the fan" and the F.B.I. burst in on him. He managed to escape and hid out in the very same welfare motel he was living during high school. However, he saw sense and turned himself in. He was sentenced to six years in prison, which he describes in his novel -HOLE IN MY LIFE-. However, after a year and a half in prison he applied to college, was accepted. He was released from prison, entered college, and soon began his writing career.
He received his BFA and his MA both from Emerson College. While in college, Jack began working on picture books with an illustrator friend. In 1976, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph. Mr. Gantos continued writing children's books and began teaching courses in children's book writing. He developed the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College in Boston. In 1995 he resigned his tenured position in order to further his writing career (which turned out to be a great decision).
He married art dealer Anne A. Lower on November 11, 1989. The couple has one child, Mabel, and they live in Boston, Massachusetts.
www.jackgantos.com
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
March 27, 2015
Jack is bleak and his world is bleak. His anxieties, failures, and bad luck do little to shape him into a more capable person, and his blind unwillingness to change makes the story clunky and relentless. I felt grim throughout. The book is full of moments where adults say baffling and terrifying things: "He's started seeing a therapist. He doesn't hurt people anymore," quietly says the parent of the animal-torturing neighbor boy. The disturbing world Jack inhabits is unremitting, which, I confess, gives the story a kind of integrity, if only because the world is an unremitting series of failures and confusions if you walk through it unwilling to change. It's certainly an antidote to the treacle of Dork Diaries or Nerd Journal or whatever other semi-conscious teen confessionals are running the elementary circuit, but Gantos's view empties the world of heart. The book mainly comprises hostile interactions between Jack's sterile, unsupportive family and the horror of digging up the rotting body of a beloved pet. Evidently that's what happens when you flunk an IQ test.
November 30, 2008
If I were a boy, maybe I would appreciate this a little more, but to me this read like an adolescent diary for a budding serial killer.
The kid flunks seventh grade, forces his little brother to pretend he is blind to make money, crushes his dead dog with a hammer in order to get him in his coffin, and puts lit matches out in a can of gasoline for fun.
Is this where the saying "boys will be boys" comes from? If so, I am glad to be a girl!
Favorite Quote:
I had this idea once of getting the world's greatest art tattooed across my back. I'd have the Mona Lisa, Whistler's Mother, Washington Crossing the Delaware - all the classics. Except the paintings would be the size of postage stamps, so I could travel around the world as a one-man museum and make a fortune by taking off my shirt and selling people magnifying glasses.
The kid flunks seventh grade, forces his little brother to pretend he is blind to make money, crushes his dead dog with a hammer in order to get him in his coffin, and puts lit matches out in a can of gasoline for fun.
Is this where the saying "boys will be boys" comes from? If so, I am glad to be a girl!
Favorite Quote:
I had this idea once of getting the world's greatest art tattooed across my back. I'd have the Mona Lisa, Whistler's Mother, Washington Crossing the Delaware - all the classics. Except the paintings would be the size of postage stamps, so I could travel around the world as a one-man museum and make a fortune by taking off my shirt and selling people magnifying glasses.
August 22, 2014
Jack wants to be a writer. He wants his professional tools to be typewriters and paper. Instead, the results of his IQ test tell him his tools should be shovels, because he's on the low end of average and not destined for greatness. His plans for launching his career don't work out the way he wants them to, and his plans to abort his woodworking career go similarly awry. But writers turn their bad experiences into good writing, and Jack's getting plenty of those bad experiences.
Funny, but less episodic than I remember. I may still use this with middle-schoolers, but not to pull a chapter as an isolated short story.
Funny, but less episodic than I remember. I may still use this with middle-schoolers, but not to pull a chapter as an isolated short story.
September 19, 2020
Here is one of 5 Jack Henry adventures. It doesn't disappoint if you are looking for Gantos gross style of humor. In this story, the grossness focuses largely on Beau-Beau, the family pet who dies, is buried, again, and again...... Jack Henry wants to be a writer, so he is looking for tragic life experiences to write about. He acquires an old-fashioned typewriter from a garage sale and it doesn't take him long to lose it in the ocean. He returns to writing in his black book.He is tested by the school counselor who determines he is an embicile and must therefore take shop class instead of the writing class he wants so badly. I get the idea that Gantos' character here, like Joey Pigza, is largely biographical. You will laugh and be grossed out in equal measure.
July 12, 2024
This book is absolutely horrifying and has no place being read by children. My son put the book down in disgust and was greatly disturbed when he read about a boy taking a hammer to his dead dog and cutting its head off to fit it in a box.
What kind of sociopath thinks this should be read by 9 year olds?
What kind of sociopath thinks this should be read by 9 year olds?
November 21, 2021
I laughed ‘til I cried, then I put this book into the hands of a reluctant 5th grade reader in my classroom. I saw it passed from hand to hand that year. Somewhere along the way, the book disappeared from my classroom library. Pretty sure I know where it went. And I am totally okay with that. ☺️
July 11, 2024
Dark comedy for children or a how to novel on being a sociopath/future serial killer? My son thought it was the latter. It made him queasy to read how the main character took a hammer to his dog to fit him into a coffin. Went straight in the trash because nobody needs to read that garbage
December 10, 2009
Jack's Black Book is about a twelve year old boy, Jack, that's life caught up to him and now he is stuck in what people, and test say about him. He lives in the suburbs near a beach. He goes to a very bad school that used to been a juvenile jail. He really hated the place so Jack took an IQ test to see if he is smart enough to transfer to another school. He was just below average so they had to keep him there, but the bad score bothered Jack and it haunted him for the rest of a book. One external conflict for Jack is that he has to deal with people who just think he is dumb like his sister, consoles in school and even his parents think he should give up on learning and take the easy road by doing physical labor all his life. A internal conflict is that since everyone thinks or knows Jack is dumb Jack is starting to believe that. He has o prove to himself and everyone else that he can be a writer and succeed.
I can connect this book to people I know. Overtime, If a lot of people keep on calling you something for a long time, you might actually start to believe it. This is a lot like that, almost everyone in jack's life is calling him slow, even the IQ test as it said he got a low to average score. i believe this book is an example of that,but this is an example of a kid who started to bieleve it and was just about to give up on himself. but he was able to get a hold on himself and realize that he really is not slow.
Finally, i give this book a 4.5 because it has some pretty funny moments and the lesson is really clear. i recommend this book to anyone who doesn't believe in themselves and to people who just want to see a kid fail at stuff =P
I can connect this book to people I know. Overtime, If a lot of people keep on calling you something for a long time, you might actually start to believe it. This is a lot like that, almost everyone in jack's life is calling him slow, even the IQ test as it said he got a low to average score. i believe this book is an example of that,but this is an example of a kid who started to bieleve it and was just about to give up on himself. but he was able to get a hold on himself and realize that he really is not slow.
Finally, i give this book a 4.5 because it has some pretty funny moments and the lesson is really clear. i recommend this book to anyone who doesn't believe in themselves and to people who just want to see a kid fail at stuff =P
July 27, 2011
This is a new author for me and I really liked reading about Jack. There are actually 3 stories in this book. Jack's failing IQ test (he's average) starts a series of events that affects Jack's life and his dream to be a writer. Jack visit's a fortune teller. She tells him an up-side down leg will be his humiliating down fall. Jack is looking for something humiliating to write about. While Jack's at the beach one day he comes across some synchronized swimmers. And of course they are upside down in the pool. Jack goes about getting a intro to the one girl he thinks is his match. Then he finds out it was all a set up. Does Jack get his humiliating story to write? You'll have to read the book to find out.
July 9, 2012
What happens when you are given evidence in 7th grade that clearly identifies you as "average"? Jack doesn't want to be "average": he wants to be a writer! His black book is where he is preserving his experiences, especially those tragic experiences which will make him a great writer. This is how one boy copes with failure, love, money, and death--not necessarily in that order. Jack Gantos has created a sort of "everyboy" in Jack Henry. Jack Henry has several dates with destiny in this book, and each of them will give him plenty of opportunity for that novel he intends to write, but he will need to tidy them up quite a bit in print if he doesn't want them to be pure comedy. I loved this book. Now I want to read the other adventures of Jack Henry.
November 29, 2008
This is based very much on events that happened to Jack Gantos as a child. Jack, the main character, is in seventh grade while narrating the story. His family thinks he is stupid (and so do all his teachers) and they ffrequently tell him so. He takes an IQ test and scores around 80 and is told he should get ready to do manual labor for the rest of his life. He accidentally "kills" his dog and then proceeds to build it a coffin. Much of the story focuses on how his family treats him and his "stupidity" and how he wants to be a writer someday.
March 7, 2013
Jack Gantos is a brilliant young adult writer. He knows just what kids will relate to and enjoy reading about. All of his Jack books have thoroughly entertained my seventh grade students as read-alouds for five years now.
This book happens to be the last one in the series. It tells hilarious tales of Jack's eighth grade year with absolutely great voice. Whether he's haggling at a garage sale for typewriter or promoting his brother's blind-act as a means of making money, Jack is good for many laughs. It's rare that my students DON'T laugh during a read-aloud of any of the Jack books.
This book happens to be the last one in the series. It tells hilarious tales of Jack's eighth grade year with absolutely great voice. Whether he's haggling at a garage sale for typewriter or promoting his brother's blind-act as a means of making money, Jack is good for many laughs. It's rare that my students DON'T laugh during a read-aloud of any of the Jack books.
November 6, 2013
This was a humorous book in the style of "Diary of a Wimpy Kid." This series, is a bit more crude than Wimpy Kid, but still funny. Jack gets himself into a lot of situations that the average middle schooler can relate to even though Jack gets dragged in a bit too far for reality. The feelings are very real even though the situations are blown out of proportion. I think that disproportion would appeal to a young adult and they would give it a much higher rating than I did.
October 19, 2010
Another great book more humorous than anything. I loved this book and I bet you would too. Its about a kid who failed an IQ test. In the book he gets made fun of by his family but he keeps on trying to write. its a little sad because his dog died.
September 19, 2012
I liked this book because of the humor and the fact that the main character is afraid that his older sister will strap a 3 sided cage to his face, fill it with starving rats that will slowly eat his way in to his brain...................
Want to read
January 18, 20081/18/08
i cant wait to read this book. really looks interesting.
i cant wait to read this book. really looks interesting.
September 17, 2008
NEVER FLUNK AN IQ TEST.. AND THIS BOOK IS VERY CONFUSING!
October 14, 2008
luv this book
Read
February 11, 2010itss good:)
January 10, 2011
It was a alright book it was not what I expected well that is all I think of it
January 10, 2011
Gross, funny. A must read. Gantos is a great writer!
January 10, 2011
i think this book was kind of weird,,,,,,,,, i didnt understand it...
January 11, 2011
Not bad
Read
January 11, 2011great story
January 26, 2011
it is the most boring and very stupid book! i dont recommend it!
Read
January 27, 2011it was ok
February 26, 2013
I remember my fifth grade teacher reading this to our class during story time. It had me and my clasmates in tears we were all laughing so hard! An amazingly hilarious story.
July 2, 2014
22 pages out of 165. Tried it. Got bored. It didn't catch me AT ALL! Gave up. Ugh.
July 9, 2015
This was an extremely alarming novel that I will never forget. I would not have read it if I didn't have to, but I'm glad I did. Strange, but well worth the read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews