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 feisty 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 launched 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.