Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade Book

Jack Henry is hoping for adventure when he moves to a new home in Miami with his family, but he can't escape his old worrying ways: he worries about being a confirmed cat killer and being fascinated with all things gross and disgusting; he worries about his crazy French-obsessed schoolteacher and about his merciless older sister; and most of all he worries about worrying so much.

Horn Book Magazine - Dean Schneider

Jack Henry's back in a laugh-out-loud read inhabited by killer cats, giant tapeworms, and escaped convicts. This latest installment of Jack's saga, which relates the events of Jack's fifth-grade year, is full of scenes you can't resist reading aloud to anyone willing to listen (such as the one in which Jack feeds his sister a giant cockroach named Zippy, or watches his father gorge himself on a seventy-two ounce steak shaped like the United States, or finds himself locked out of his house wearing nothing but his best friend's mother's underwear). And if several scenes offend readers who don't share Jack's fascination with the rude and gross, that's okay; Jack's parents, teacher, and sister are on hand to teach jack good manners and judgement and to help him grow up, or at least to keep him from being a complete moron. As in the previous three jack Henry book (Heads or Tails, Jack's New Power, and Jack's Black Book), to which Jack on the Tracks is a prequel, Jack keeps a journal. However, in this novel, the journal seems more extraneous, something Jack only mentions now and then. This book will appeal to the many fans of the Jack Henry series, and it can provide inspiration to young writers who will see how Gantos mined his own early school years for stories to embellish.