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He's really at sea this time
As the Henry family sets sail for a new life on Cape Hatteras, fourth-grader Jack is struggling to chart a course between his parents' contradictory advice on making friends and influencing people. Just tell people what they want to hear, Dad advises. Just tell the truth, Mom cautions. Jack finds there are no easy answers as he drifts through his crazy school year, falling desperately in love with his young teacher, getting suckered into becoming a bad-behavior spy for the principal, and being forced to make a presentable pet out of a duck with backward feet. Indeed, with an airheaded, air-guitar-playing neighbor the closest thing to a friend, and a judgmental older sister his relentless enemy, it's all he can do to stay afloat.
This colorful and comic new collection of interrelated stories featuring the author's hapless alter ego is a prequel to the other four books in the Jack Henry series, praised by Booklist for their "hilarious, exquisitely painful, and utterly on-target depiction of the life of an adolescent and preadolescent boy."
Jack Gantos continues the Jack Henry Books (Jack on the Tracks; Heads or Tails) with Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue. Jack's father rejoins the Navy and the family relocates from their home just south of Pittsburgh, Pa., to Cape Hatteras, N.C. On the car ride south, Jack solicits advice from his parents on how to make friends, and their contradictory advice ("Tell [people] what they want to hear," says Dad; "Always be yourself," Mom says) sets the stage for a series of conflicts for the nine-year-old, who develops a crush on his teacher, and reluctantly winds up a stool pigeon for the principal. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
| Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
| $99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub |
Andrew Grette
reviewed Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue on December 25, 2015
Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue
Jack Adrift is the first in the Jack Gantos' five-part Jack Henry Adventures. Based on a journal the author started in elementary school, the books are at times funny, at times relatable, and at times heartbreakingly sad. While the account of Jack's fourth grade year ends on something of a high note, one cannot forget the reality of his day-to-day existence laid bare just a few pages earlier:
My room was the one place I wanted to be. It was easy to sit by myself and feel all alone in the world. Like Dad sleeping out in the car, it was easier to just not talk about things that bothered me. It was easier to try to forget my past than to sort it out. It made me sad to think that, like Dad, I was already wanting a part of myself to disappear. I reached across my bed to my nightstand where I had saved one model, PT-109. I pulled it close to me, as if I were keeping it in a safe harbor. I didn't want to let it go. It was a little bit of hope that my year had been worth remembering.
While obviously written for kids, I think in many ways this tale would be useful for adults to read so as to remember the often entirely-contradictory messages their fourth-grade selves received from their parents, how kids try to take on their parents' problems, and how children often have this ineffable ability to make an otherwise crappy situation an adventure.
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