Dead End in Norvelt

Dead End in Norvelt

First edition
Author	Jack Gantos
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Children's historical novel, autobiographical novel, mystery, comedy, political economy
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date	September 13, 2011
Media type	Print (hardcover)
Pages	341 pp
ISBN	978-0-374-37993-3
OCLC	692290969
LC Class	PZ7.G15334 Dd 2011[1]

Dead End in Norvelt is an autobiographical novel by the American author Jack Gantos, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011. It features a boy named Jack Gantos and is based partly on the author's childhood in Norvelt, Pennsylvania. According to one reviewer, the "real hero" is "his home town and its values", a "defiantly political" message.^[2]

The American Library Association awarded Gantos and Dead End the 2012 Newbery Medal, honoring the book as the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children".^[3][4] It also won the annual Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.^[5] In Britain, where it was published by the Transworld Publishers imprint Corgi Books, it was one of eight books on the longlist for the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.^[6]

Newbery judges called the book "achingly funny"^[4] and one British reviewer called it "rib-splitting".^[7]

Plot

Dead End takes place during the summer after the American schoolboy Jack Gantos fires his father's war trophy, a Japanese sniper rifle thinking it is unloaded, but a bullet somehow flies out.. As punishment, he must stay in the house except as sent by his mother to help their elderly neighbor Miss Volker write obituaries for the town newspaper. He notices that elderly, "original Norvelters" are dying away relatively fast. Later, a Hells Angel dies while crazily dancing a three-mile stretch, and the rest of the Hells Angel gang begins to light houses on fire. Even later, Jack's dad acquires a J-3 airplane, and assigns Jack to dig an underground bomb shelter as the dad builds a runway for the plane, and Jack gets a car from Miss Volker as a birthday present. As Jack thinks about the strange rate of deaths in original Norvelters, he realizes that thin mint Girl Scout cookies may have something to do with it because many people in town were using it. Soon, Miss Volker is placed in house arrest when the police find poisoned chocolates in her basement and accuse her of feeding them to the old Norvelters. While visiting her, Miss Volker says that a man named Mr. Spizz admitted to killing the Norvelters, and that Mr. Spizz stole Jack's car to get a six-hour headstart on police.

Themes

In the book Dead End In Norvelt, people use power to control others. The Newbery Medal judges, who are American children's librarians, cited the importance of history and reading.^[4] The Guardian Prize judges, who are British children's novelists, cited "self-sufficiency, community, and neighbourliness".^[6]

Children's writer Josh Lacey, one British reviewer of Dead End, called it "defiantly political"; one of its messages is "don't forget the narratives of American life that have been neglected or deliberately buried by the dominant culture." "[T]he real hero of the novel isn't Jack himself, but his home town and its values. Norvelt was a New Deal town built by the US government to house poor families and named after Eleanor Roosevelt, described by Miss Volker as 'the greatest American woman who has ever lived'."^[2]

Level

Another Irish reviewer suggested that "every Elder will be able to relate to Jack's character" and recommended the book for readers age 9 to 13.^[7] The Guardian Prize judges recommended it for ages 12 and up.^[6]

See also

Jack Gantos . web

References

External links

• "Jack Gantos, Chris Raschka win Newbery, Caldecott Medals" — ALA Press Release, January 23, 2012
• jackgantos.com "Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is the story of an incredible two months for a boy named Jack Gantos."