Chelsea District Library recently announced that Jack Gantos, author of the 2015 5H Community Read book Hole in My Life, will be appearing for a special community event on Saturday, Oct. 17, at 11 a.m. in the Washington Street Education Center Auditorium.
Residents of the Five Healthy Towns of Chelsea, Dexter, Grass Lake, Manchester, and Stockbridge are invited to hear Gantos’s insights about his experience described in this book. There will be cider and donuts and an opportunity for book signing after the presentation. Although over 2,000 free copies of Hole in My Life will be distributed throughout the five communities during this year’s Read, personal copies of Hole in My Life and Gantos’s new book The Trouble in Me will be available for sale onsite from Just Imagine Book Store
The 5H Community Read is a district-wide program to promote more active and better-connected communities, while encouraging a love of reading. It is supported by the Chelsea Area Wellness Foundation (CWF) and each year’s read focuses on one of the foundation’s four health initiatives. The initiative explored through Gantos’s book Hole in My Life pertains to “Avoiding Unhealthy Substances.”
This book is a revealing account of the author’s experience as a young adult when he recklessly agreed to help sail a 60-foot yacht loaded with a ton of hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his partners sold the drug until federal agents caught up with them. The narrative includes an important message about not letting your mistakes define you.
Gantos is an award-winning author, whose memoir Hole in My Life won both the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert honors. He has written books for readers of all ages and titles from his Joey Pigza series have been named as National Book Award Finalists and as Newbery Honors. In addition, Dead End in Norvelt, was the 2012 Newbery Award Winner and the Scott O’Dell Award Winner for Best Historic Fiction. His most recent book The Trouble In Me, is also an autobiographical work detailing his life at the age of fourteen as he begins to slide off track, just a few years before his experience chronicled in Hole in My Life.
To find out where to get a free copy of Hole in My Life or to see what 5H Community Read events are scheduled in the five participating communities, click here.
Participants are encouraged to read and share their free copy with other community members throughout September and October.
If you can’t find a copy around town, visit your library in any of the five participating communities to check out a copy.
