Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade Book

Sometimes it seems as if Jack Gantos has an unending well of story ideas from his days as a kid. He takes actual experiences from the first twelve years or so of his life and mixes in just enough fiction to make for stories that are hilarious to readers of any age and reading level. Dead End in Norvelt, winner of the 2012 John Newbery Medal, may be his most famous example of this, but Jack Gantos had started with that form of storytelling long before his Newbery Medal winner was ever published. In 1994, Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade launched the popular new character of Jack Henry, through whom Jack Gantos could live his memorable childhood days again (albeit in somewhat invented fashion) and give his readers a taste of what it was like to be a kid decades earlier. Life in the 1970s (which was actually about ten years after Jack Gantos, himself, was in sixth grade) wasn't a whole lot different from life in the '90s, as it turned out, and Jack Henry proved to be nearly as popular and enduring a character as Gantos's classic picture-book cat, Rotten Ralph.

Heads or Tails is about Jack, his older sister Betsy, five-year-old brother Pete, and mother and father living in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, scrimping and saving and trying to stay afloat with never a break in the financial crises that keep on coming their way. Jack doesn't demand much; for the most part, all he really wants is to have peace with his parents and for his friends to like him, to keep Pete and himself out of major trouble and have some fun along the way. He knows that his parents can't afford to buy him all of the things he wants, but he's learned to adapt to that reality, as do most kids who come from households of modest means. Jack's father has difficulty holding down a job for very long, and so his family has moved five times in the past six years, heading to wherever it is next that promises solid employment, even though it never seems to work out over the long haul. Despite the transitory nature of his life, however, Jack is able to come up with a few new friends wherever he goes, and we see some of his Ft. Lauderdale friends in the adventures of this book. From the outside, Jack may appear not to be especially good at dealing with change, but he always lands on his feet, coping with whatever new storms enter his life and being willing to rebuild on the other side of them. For Jack, contentment hinges on his ability to get back up after being knocked down and adapt to changes as they arrive.

Besides Jack, I think that my favorite character in Heads or Tails has to be his younger brother, Pete, who appears as a main character in a few of the stories. Pete is smart, and knows how to use what minor leverage he has to get what he wants, but he's also sensitive to what's happening to the people around him, quick to break into tears if he thinks that some calamity has befallen Jack or any of the rest of the family. Pete often follows Jack's lead, which lands him in some bad situations in Heads or Tails, and it's this reality that eventually causes Jack to reevaluate the choices that he makes in his own life. If the bad decisions that he makes aren't only going to affect himself, but Pete also, usually with more severe consequences for Pete since he isn't as savvy or aware as Jack, then maybe there's something to what his father says about Jack being responsible for Pete's safety. Maybe he really should think about the messages that he's sending his younger brother through every action he takes, wordlessly declaring some things to be all right and others off-limits. It's important business, being a role model, and what he leads Pete into today could have a big impact on his tomorrow, as well as the many tomorrows that follow.

Heads or Tails is sort of a hybrid book, not completely definable as either a collection of short stories or a traditional junior novel. Therefore, it's kind of hard to say which individual stories are the best, since they all run together and refer back to previous happenings on a consistent basis. Still, if I were to highlight just a few of the eight stories in this book as being particularly noteworthy, I'd have to say that My Brother's Finger, Death and Taxes and Cocoa Beach are the three best. If I were to choose a fourth, it might be My Brother's Arm. These chapters strike me as being the most thoughtfully and sensitively written, and I don't think it's a coincidence that two of the four feature Jack's brother, Pete, as a main character. One can see the beginning stages of a future Newbery Medalist developing his novel-writing style in this book, figuring out how to tell stories that are fresh but also have some deeper meaning, humorous while still containing real literary value. I think that Heads or Tails accomplishes this balance well, and makes me eager to delve into the rest of the series and find out what happens with Jack next.

Jack Gantos's books are always very readable, entertaining for all ages and good for generating further conversation between kids about what the stories mean to them. I've become quite a fan of Jack Gantos, and would enthusiastically recommend any of his books that I've ever read. My rating of Heads or Tails is definitely two and a half stars, and I thought for a while about rounding it up to three. I'm confident that most any reader will find something to like about this book.