Worse Than Rotten Ralph by Jack Gantos

Worse Than Rotten Ralph by Jack Gantos

In the past, you could read works of late Stoics, such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, who wrote about how to live a good life.

Now, you can also read works of early and middle Stoics, such as Diogenes of Babylon, Panaetius, and Posidonius, who wrote about philosophical questions, such as the nature of the universe and the basis of knowledge, as well as about the good life.

About this Series

In the past, you had to learn about most Hellenistic philosophers by reading descriptions of their doctrines. Imagine if you could not read the works of Plato or William James and could only read descriptions of their doctrines You would have no sense of their intellects or of their personalities.

Yet the works of many Hellenistic philosophers have always been hidden in plain sight, quoted in the dialogs of Cicero, where they have been accessible to a handful of classical scholars who were willing to search for the sources of the dialogs and to wade through all the extraneous material that Cicero added.

This series, the Rediscovered Philosophers, disentangles the philosophers' works from the dialogs, making these works accessible to a wider audience for the first time. It includes three books: Philosophy of the Stoics, Philosophy of the Skeptical Academy, and Philosophy of the Syncretic Academy.

Jack Gantos has written books for people of all ages, from picture books and middle-grade fiction to novels for young adults and adults. His works include Hole in My Life, a memoir that won the Michael L. Printz and Robert F. Sibert Honors, Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, Joey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book, and Dead End in Norvelt, winner of the Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.

Jack was born in Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, and when he was seven, his family moved to Barbados. He attended British schools, where there was much emphasis on reading and writing, and teachers made learning a lot of fun. When the family moved to south Florida, he found his new classmates uninterested in their studies, and his teachers spent most of their time disciplining students. Jack retreated to an abandoned bookmobile (three flat tires and empty of books) parked out behind the sandy ball field, and read for most of the day. The seeds for Jack's writing career were planted in sixth grade, when he read his sister's diary and decided he could write better than she could. He begged his mother for a diary and began to collect anecdotes he overheard at school, mostly from standing outside the teachers' lounge and listening to their lunchtime conversations. Later, he incorporated many of these anecdotes into stories.

While in college, he and an illustrator friend, Nicole Rubel, began working on picture books. After a series of well-deserved rejections, they published their first book, Rotten Ralph, in 1976. It was a success and the beginning of Jack's career as a professional writer. Jack continued to write children's books and began to teach courses in children's book writing and children's literature. He developed the master's degree program in children's book writing at Emerson College and the Vermont College M.F.A. program for children's book writers. He now devotes his time to writing books and educational speaking. He lives with his family in Boston, Massachusetts.