Dead End in Norvelt
First edition
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| Author | Jack Gantos |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's historical novel, autobiographical novel, mystery, comedy, political economy |
| Publisher | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
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Publication date
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September 13, 2011 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 341 pp |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 692290969 |
| LC Class | PZ7.G15334 Dd 2011 |
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.
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". It also won the annual Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. 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.
Newbery judges called the book "achingly funny" and one British reviewer called it "rib-splitting".
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 whom upon jack's arrival, boils her hands in water and bites off the blisters, Which results in jack getting a nosebleed. Aside from that Miss Volker also writes obituaries for the town newspaper. He notices that elderly, "original Norvelters" are dying away relatively fast. Later, a Hells Angel gang member is hit by a semi truck 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.
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