Gantos, Jack

Sarah's cat Rotten Ralph tries to help her create a school project based on ancient Egypt, but he is more of a hindrance than a help.

Comic misadventures ensue when seventh-grader Jack tries to write the great American novel.

Joey tries to keep his life from degenerating into total chaos when his mother sends him to be home-schooled with a hostile blind girl, his divorced parents cannot stop fighting, and his grandmother is dying of emphysema.

When his father moves the family to Barbados, thirteen-year-old Jack learns that life is not always idyllic on an island paradise.

Jack's diary helps him deal with his problems which include dog-eating alligators, a terror for an older sister, a younger brother who keeps breaking parts of himself, and next-door neighbors who are really weird.

Sarah's high-spirited, poorly behaved cat, Ralph, disrupts her aunt's wedding with his outlandish antics.

Rotten Ralph makes an earnest attempt at good behavior but is enticed, not too reluctantly, into a series of misadventures by some ruffian alley cats.

When Rotten Ralph, the cat, fails to win a spot on a baseball team with his friend Sarah, he becomes the "cat boy" instead, still dreaming of proving himself the superstar he imagines himself to be.

When the veterinarian determines that Sarah's cat has used up eight of his nine lives, will the high-spirited feline finally stop misbehaving?.

To the constant disappointment of his mother and his teachers, Joey has trouble paying attention or controlling his mood swings when his prescription meds wear off and he starts getting worked up and acting wired.