Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key

By:  Jack Gantos
Published By:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1998

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Web Page Information Compiled By:
Brandi Clarke, Kristy Dix, Alix Allen, Erin Barnes and Jane Conard
Children's Literature Class 408 at Salisbury State University
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Joey Pigza Bumper Sticker Contest

Remember in Chapter 7 when Joey decides to do something nice to help the world by creating a million bumper stickers with the phrase "Hate Is Not A Family Value", well now you can help the world too!

Create your own bumper sticker to make the world a better place.  Think of a phrase or motto that would encourage others to become better people and make the world a better place to live.  Decorate your bumper sticker any way you like.

A contest will be held where we will choose the most creative and unique bumper stickers to be published on this website.

Joey Pigza is a story about a young boy who just doesn't seem to fit in.  He suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder or ADHD.  Throughout the story he tries to control himself with the help of medication.  Joey learns the hard way about making decisions such as sticking his finger in the pencil sharpener, swallowing the house key and running with scissors.  "I was messing with my house key, and before long I had it in my mouth and I was playing a game.  I was trying to train myself to swallow the key so I could slowly pull it back up from inside my belly, up my throat and into my mouth, like I was fishing for bottom feeders.  It hurt to do it because sometimes the key got caught sideways down my throat, but when it did that I just gave the string a tug and straightened it out.  The only other problem was that every now and again it made me gag so hard I almost threw up."  This explains why the book is called Joey Pigza swallowed the Key.  It is a very humorous book but a lot of the situations were not so funny to Joey.  He faces consequences including the possibility of being put in a special school.  Read and find out for yourself  how Joey gets the key out of his stomach and if he learns to control himself.

Jack Gantos started thinking about being a writer in the sixth grade.  He thought that he could write better than his older sister.  His first encounters with writing came out in a diary.  He wrote anecdotes and overheard conversations which later turned into stories…  When Jack wasn’t writing he spent his time reading and thoroughly enjoyed the bookmobile.  In High School Jack decided to become a writer.  When he got to college he met and illustrator and they began working on a picture book.  In 1976 he published his first book.  It was entitled Rotten Ralph and was a big success for Jack.  This started Jack’s professional writing career and he has come to write many books.  Some of these books include: Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade (1994), Jack's New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year (1995), Desire Lines (1997), and Jack's Black Book (1997), all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux.  Now Jack spends his time teaching courses in children’s book writing and children’s literature.

Jack gave a presentation in March at the 1998 Oxford Conference in Oxford, Mississippi.  After the conference he was interviewed.  Here is what Jack had to say when asked, “How did you get started writing picture books?”

"I started writing picture books while I was in Emerson College. They were really bad picture books because I was an incredibly arrogant writer--I was a sophomore and they don't call them sophomoric for nothing. So I decided to write books for children 'cause I figured I'd get published in a jiffy. The first book I wrote was called A Visit to Grandmother's House, and there was another one about polar bears. They were horrible books. I thought, 'I'm not writing about anything I really care about or know about.' There was something fundamental about it that made it a failure, and that's that it wasn't my experience. I could make it up, fabricate it, but it just didn't emotionally have any resonance for me. And so for me I'm always looking for that connection. I can't write unless two things happen: I have to emotionally have a connection to it, and, like Truman Capote said, I never wrote a word I didn't think was going to sell. But I always write it first." [Gantos went on to write his Rotten Ralph series about an off-kilter cat, which he based on his experiences with a stressed-out feline.]

Material Taken from:

· People in Books.  Jack Gantos-- Picture This.  American Booksellers Association. Edited by Robin Peress.
· Jack Gantos.  http://www.mtnbrook.k12.al.us/wf99/gantos2.htm

For an exciting discussion on the book  Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key:

Books by Jack Gantos:

Desire Lines
Published by Farrar Straus & Giroux (1997)

Zip Six : A Novel
Published by Bridge Works Published Co (1982)

Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade
Published by Farrar Straus & Giroux (1999)

Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade
Published by Farror Straus & Giroux (1999)

Jack's Black Book
Published by Farror Straus & Giroux (1997)

Jack's New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year
Published by Farror Straus & Giroux (1995)

• Review of Joey Pigza
• Want to buy the book? Check it out at Amazon.com
• About the Author and an excerpt from 'Joey Pigza Loses Control'