Books in The Jack Henry Adventures series

Jack's life is a crazy roller-coaster ride. At his fifth school in six years, he has a crackpot teacher who wont give him a break about his lousy handwriting and a secret crush who wants to be a policewoman. At home, he has a pesky little brother with a knack for breaking an arm whenever Jack's supposed to be looking after him, a terror for an older sister who mocks his belief in UF)s, all sorts of weird neighbors, and, last but not least, ferocious alligators in the canal behind his house. Writing in his diary about his good days and bad days is one way Jack survives his up-and-down year. but he's also a kid who knows that life can go any which way at any given moment. He might as well flip a coin: heads he wins, tails he loses, What will turn up next?

Jack's life is a crazy roller-coaster ride. At his fifth school in six years, he has a crackpot teacher who wont give him a break about his lousy handwriting and a secret crush who wants to be a policewoman. At home, he has a pesky little brother with a knack for breaking an arm whenever Jack's supposed to be looking after him, a terror for an older sister who mocks his belief in UF)s, all sorts of weird neighbors, and, last but not least, ferocious alligators in the canal behind his house.Writing in his diary about his good days and bad days is one way Jack survives his up-and-down year. but he's also a kid who knows that life can go any which way at any given moment. He might as well flip a coin: heads he wins, tails he loses, What will turn up next?

A prequel to Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth GradeInspired by the author's childhood diaries, this new collection of Jack Henry stories depicts a fifth-grade year to end all fifth-grade years. Living in a Miami rental home with a busy railroad track running a stone's throw from the backyard, the author's alter ego is plagued by a know-it-all older sister, a bizarre Francophile teacher, a series of crazed cats, a slightly off-kilter father, a tapeworm, and a pair of escaped convicts -- to name just a few of his antagonists. But for Jack Henry, hailed by School Library Journal as "an 'everyboy' whose world may be wacko but whose heart and spirit are eminently sane," no matter how rough the ride, there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

He’s really at sea this timeAs the Henry family sets sail for a new life on Cape Hatteras, fourth-grader Jack is struggling to chart a course between his parents’ contradictory advice on making friends and influencing people. Just tell people what they want to hear, Dad advises. Just tell the truth, Mom cautions. Jack finds there are no easy answers as he drifts through his crazy school year, falling desperately in love with his young teacher, getting suckered into becoming a bad-behavior spy for the principal, and being forced to make a presentable pet out of a duck with backward feet. Indeed, with an airheaded, air-guitar-playing neighbor the closest thing to a friend, and a judgmental older sister his relentless enemy, it’s all he can do to stay afloat.This colorful and comic new collection of interrelated stories featuring the author’s hapless alter ego is a prequel to the other four books in the Jack Henry series, praised by Booklist for their “hilarious, exquisitely painful, and utterly on-target depiction of the life of an adolescent and preadolescent boy.” Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue is a 2004 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

An uproarious companion to Heads or Tails and Jack's New PowerAccording to his new motto - A WRITER'S JOB IS TO TURN HIS WORST EXPERIENCES INTO MONEY - Jack Henry is going to be filty rich even before he gets out of junior high, for his life is filled with the worst experiences imaginable. In the course of the few months covered in this cycle of interlinked stories, Jack is humiliated by a gorgeous syncronized swimmer, gets a tattoo the size of an ant on his big toe, flubs an IQ test and nearly fails wood shop, and has to dig up his dead dog not once but twice. And that's not the half of it. But, as The School Library Journal put it, Jack's "a survivor, an 'everyboy' whose world may be wacko but whose heart and spirit are eminently sane." Jack may not end up rolling in dough, but he, along with his humorously off-kilter familly, always keeps on trying.

Jack Henry has moved to the island of Barbados with his offbeat family and his secret diary. But still he can’t escape his penchant for wacky misadventure. Because of a headless chicken, he gets a violent case of blood poisoning. In a pepper-eating contest with his father, he discovers the perils of male bonding. And then he has his heartstrings twanged by an older woman who just happens to be his sister’s best friend. These are just a few of his trials and tribulations in these eight fierce and funny stories, based on the author’s own childhood diaries.

Schoolboy time-traveller Jack Christie is thrown back to 1940s Nazi-occupied France. With the Battle of Britain and the German Vengeance programme underway, the Second World War is at a crucial point. Jack and his best friend Angus take a more senior role in VIGIL's attempts to prevent intervention in history, attempting to stop the Revisionists from their highly volatile nuclear plan to stop the war. With spitfire dogfights, jeep races and thrilling chases, the boys have their most hair-raising adventure yet, including involvement in an assassination attempt on Hitler himself. Just as all seems lost, Jack's father returns and a nuclear disaster is averted in the nick of time.