Dead End in Norvelt
Dead End in Norvelt
by: Jack Gantos
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Ages: 10 & up
2011
The summary: Jack is grounded. For the summer. But just when Jack thinks his summer will be a boring monotony of digging a bomb shelter and cleaning up his perpetual bloody nose, he is enlisted by one of Norvelt’s oldest residents to help write obituaries. Faster than you would expect, the elderly start to die, and some people start wondering if maybe they were murdered. Oh, and there are also some hell’s angels that wreak havoc, the threat of nuclear war (hence the bomb shelter), and an unknown someone buying up all of Norvelt. What started out as a potentially boring summer is shaping up into something quite different entirely.
The good: I listened to this book, and it was hilarious. Jack Gantos is the author and reader for the audiobook, and his dry, sardonic tone highlighted the humor of the story. The novel takes place during the ’60′s when people where terrified of the Russians and nuclear war, and the setting is Norvelt, PA, which was actually founded by Eleanor Roosevelt to help people get back on their feet during the depression. The story is part autobiographical, part history, and part fiction. I loved, loved, loved it, and I’m not usually a fan of historical type fiction. What can I say? Put history into an obituary and apparently I’m hooked.
Rating: 8 (fantastic)
This video is a fun description of the book:
Filed under: Family, Middle Grade, Mystery
