Winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal
Written by Jack Gantos
Young Jack feels like he’s hit a dead end in life when he is grounded forever by his quarrelsome parents for shooting an old rifle. His dead-end-life continues as he is forced by his mother to help his old neighbor, obituary writer and undertaker Miss Volker. The eccentric old folks in the town of Norvelt are dying off and as Jack helps write the obituaries, because Miss Volker’s arthritis makes is so she cannot write, we get a sense of the town’s history. Whenever he is stressed, which seems to happen through most of this book, Jack suffers from explosive nosebleeds and his blood is always covering everything. Through the summer, and his association with Miss Volker, Jack grows up and learns that knowing history is important and that he’s getting too old to keep on doing “stupid stuff.” This is an endearing coming-of-age story.
Review by Althea Bennett, Wasatch Jr. High Media Center
Rating: ★★★★✩ (4 stars)
Interest Level: Grades 5+
Dead End in Norvelt
Written by Jack Gantos
Farrar Straus Giroux
341 pages
Release Date: September 13, 2011
ISBN: 9780374379933 (hardcover)
Andrea Van Wagoner
November 15, 2011
I’d like to read it. It has caught my curiosity!
Keith Smedberg
May 3, 2012
While a great story and even better with all the history that was thrown in…it was not an award winner. I kept reading but could have put it down and forgotten to pick up quite easily.