SATA

PERSONAL

Born September 3, 1949; married; wife’s name Joanne (a children’s librarian).

ADDRESS

• Home - Red Bank, NJ.
• Agent - Andrea Cascardi, Transatlantic Literary Agency, 72 Glengowan Rd., Toronto, Ontario M4N 1G4, Canada.

CAREER

Poet, writer, and book and magazine designer.

AWARDS:

CCBC Choice designation, and American Library Association (ALA) Notable Book for Children designation and Quick Pick for Young Adults designation, all 2005, all for Technically, It’s Not My Fault; Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award Honor designation, 2008, for Blue Lipstick.

WRITINGS

• Pictures Tell Stories, Open Court (Chicago, IL), 1995
• (Self-illustrated) Technically, It’s Not My Fault: Concrete Poems, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2004
• Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2007
• The Travel Game, illustrated by R.W. Alley, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2008
• Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus, Clarion Books (New York, NY), 2011
• Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the Cafeteria, Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Boston, MA), 2017
• ,

Author of “Beatrice Black Bear” (monthly cartoon), for Click magazine.

SIDELIGHTS

John Grandits started his career in children’s book publishing as a book designer and an art director, and he has also worked as an art director at the highly praised Cricket magazine. However, he is best known to middle-grade and teen readers as the author of several verse novels featuring concrete poetry. A whimsical verse form, concrete poetry is comprised of words typeset on each page in such a way that they represent an object that is the subject of the same poem. For example, a poem about a snake might be typeset to twist and turn in a ropelike line across the page, visually mimicking the shape of a snake. In Technically, It’s Not My Fault: Concrete Poems, Grandits takes concrete poetry a step further, using colored fonts, drawings, and other visual elements to focus on a boy’s troubles with his older sister. In Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems he employs the same techniques, this time to present the siblings’ conflicts from the older sister’s perspective.

In an interview in the Writing and Ruminating blog, Grandits talked about the process of laying out the poems in a collection. He admitted that varying the shapes of the poems is “a big concern. I try to think about it as I go along. But the hard work comes at the end. The first step is to have more than enough material to fill the book. Then my editor … and I spread them out over a huge conference table and try to put them in order. Certain poems have to be in certain places because of the story lines. Other poems had always meant to go together. The shape of each poem is very important for the flow of the book.” Grandits also noted: “Then there were poems that didn’t make the cut. Heartbreaking.”

In Technically, It’s Not My Fault eleven-year-old Robert shares the ups and downs of his day, including homework, basketball, friends, nonsensical musings, and his battles with his annoying older sister Jessie. Grandits’s young narrator “emerges as the prototypical kids’-book kid: smart-mouthed, eternally at war with his sister, deeply in tune with the digestive process, and more interested in sports and video games than school,” explained a Kirkus Reviews writer in appraising the poetry collection. The middle grader’s humorous and often sarcastic musings are captured in a series of poems that, taken together, comprise what Booklist contributor Gillian Engberg described as a “highly creative collection” able to “convince readers that poetry can be loud, outrageous, gross fun.” In School Library Journal, Marilyn Taniguchi praised the “brilliant” design of Technically, It’s Not My Fault , adding that Grandits’s “technical brilliance and goofy good humor [combine] to provide an accessible, fun-filled collection of poems” for middle-grade readers. Predicting that many readers “will appreciate the scatological wit” Robert employs, a Publishers Weekly critic dubbed Grandits’s book “a technically (and imaginatively) inspired typeface experiment.”

Turning to older readers, Blue Lipstick finds fifteen-year-old Jessie narrating her own perspective regarding high-school life and the annoyance of being Robert’s sister. In addition to her typical teen fascination with boys, clothes, and makeup, Jessie also writes about her role on the volleyball team, her decision to become a vegetarian, her time practicing the cello, and her unique attitudes about life. In addition to using over fifty different fonts, unique page designs, and a graphic cover design, in Blue Lipstick Grandits presents readers with an intimate view of a creative, likeable, and strong-willed teen who “leaps right off the page, in turn feisty and insecure,” in the opinion of Horn Book contributor Tanya D. Auger. The poet’s “irreverent, witty collection should resonate with a wide audience,” predicted Taniguchi, while in Kirkus Reviews a contributor dubbed Grandits’s second collection of concrete verse a “a playfully worthy companion” to Technically, It’s Not My Fault.

 

Grandits published Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus in 2011. The book recalls all the familiar horrors of riding the school bus, from the scary driver to the rows and rows of unfriendly faces. James advises his younger brother, Kyle, on the hard rules of riding the bus, including where to sit, who not to look at, and what not to touch.

Booklist contributor Daniel Kraus commented that “this skews slightly older.” However, Kraus mentioned that the topic “is perfect for anyone dealing with the Big Yellow Monster.” A contributor to Kirkus Reviews insisted that “Austin’s acrylic artwork is amazingly lifelike.” The same reviewer concluded that this book is “worthy of being shelved next to Jon Scieszka’s funniest.” A contributor to the Card Catalog blog admitted: “I’m going to have to add this one to my read-alouds at the beginning of the year.” The same reviewer found the book to be “hilarious.” A Publishers Weekly contributor opined that “Kyle’s anxiety-ridden narration is straight out of A Christmas Story.”

In 2017 Grandits published Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the Cafeteria. Kyle is older now after mastering the school bus. But when a girl on the bus finds out that he is buying his lunch for the first time, she advises him on the dos and don’ts of the school’s cafeteria. She warns him about holding up the line, who to sit with, and paying.

A contributor to Kirkus Reviews noticed that “some solid advice about both the cafeteria and life is embedded in this tongue-in-cheek tale.” Writing in Jen Robinson’s Book Page, Jennifer Robinson confessed: “I think that Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the Cafeteria absolutely belongs in elementary school libraries and in the home of kids who are fascinated by the social dynamics of insects and/or grade schoolers.” Robinson further called it “a standout title.”

BIOCRIT

PERIODICALS

• Booklist, December 15, 2004, Gillian Engberg, review of Technically, It’s Not My Fault: Concrete Poems, p. 739; July 1, 2011, Daniel Kraus, review of Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus, p. 66.

• Horn Book, July 1, 2007, Tanya D. Auger, review of Blue Lipstick: Concrete Poems, p. 408.

• Kirkus Reviews, October 15, 2004, review of Technically, It’s Not My Fault, p. 1006; May 1, 2007, review of Blue Lipstick; June 1, 2011, review of Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus; June 1, 2017, review of Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the Cafeteria.

• Publishers Weekly, December 6, 2004, review of Technically, It’s Not My Fault, p. 61; July 1, 2011, review of Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus.

• School Library Journal, December, 2004, Marilyn Taniguchi, review of Technically, It’s Not My Fault, p. 161; July, 2007, Marilyn Taniguchi, review of Blue Lipstick, p. 115.

ONLINE

• Card Catalog, https://ccbooks.wordpress.com/ (August 23, 2011), review of Ten Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the School Bus.

• Jen Robinson’s Book Page, http://jkrbooks.typepad.com/ (June 22, 2017), Jennifer Robinson, review of Seven Rules You Absolutely Must Not Break If You Want to Survive the Cafeteria.

• Writing and Ruminating, http://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/ (May 22, 2008), Kelly R. Fineman, author interview.*