KDL Recommends > Staff Picks > March 2012
KDL Recommends
Dead End in Norvelt
ISBN: 0374379939
Title: Dead End in Norvelt
Author: Jack Gantos
KDL Description:
I would recommend Jack Gantos’s Dead End in Norvelt, winner of the 2012 Newbery Award. Kirkus Reviews described the tone of the novel much better than I could: “[A] characteristically provocative gothic comedy with sublime undertones.” Dead End tells the story of young Jack Gantos growing up in the slowly dying town of Norvelt, Pennsylvania, his friendship with the quirky, elderly obituary writer, Ms. Volker, and a series of deaths that aren’t really what they seem. Along the way in this entertaining theatre of the absurd story, big questions are explored concerning death, the past, the intertwining of personal history with national history, the lines between fact and fiction, and the struggle between nostalgia and progress. Does history happen to us or do we make history happen?
Great read for kids and adults alike, with lots of boy appeal!
-Dawn at Wyoming
Amazon Description:
Dead End in Norvelt is the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal for the year’s best contribution to children’s literature and the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction!
Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is “grounded for life” by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack’s way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is confusing, and the future is completely up in the air.
