Dead End In Norvelt

Dead End In Norvelt

Written By Jack Gantos
Image Accessed 11/13/2013 http://haerr.blogspot.com/2012/08/dead-end-in-norvelt.html

Summary

As writer/protagonist Jack Gantos spends his summer grounded for mowing down his mom’s cornfield (under his father’s orders), he befriends the enigmatic Miss. Volker; the local obituary columnist and medical examiner. Through his association with Miss. Volker, Jack comes to learn the history of his home town of Norvelt, PA and realize that while the town is drying up, all the old ladies who live there are dying at a suspicious rate!

Critical Analysis

Norvelt is an actual town, established by Eleanore Rossevelt during the Great Depression as a community where low income American’s were suppose to be able to receive a home that would nurture their families and values and provide enough land to support them when times got rough. In Dead End in Norvelt, time has not been kind to the town of Norvelt and in the summer of 1962, the town is dying due to a lack of jobs and no new families moving into the community. While still trying to cling to their founding values of community and sharing, Norvelt slowly begins to fade away in the face of commercialism and independence that became prevalent after World War II. Gantos paints the picture of the fading Norvelt beautifully and allows the sense of history to permeate the pages by setting the time period with facts, like Armstrong’s orbit of the Earth, rather than by setting out dates.

Hapless author and main character Jack Gantos is a nosebleed prone boy, sandwiched between his community driven mother and his progressive minded father. As the story begins, Jack is grounded by his mother for the whole summer because he plowed under her cornfield at the request of his father. Thus begins Jack’s isolated summer that allows Jack to get to know the eccentric, arthritic old Miss. Volker. Through Jack’s assistance with Miss. Volker, readers get an exquisitely painted view of the town, its history and the people of Norvelt and how change comes to everyone, whether they want it or not. While helping Miss. Volker Jack is introduced to both the living and the dead residents of Norvelt and the wide variety of people who make up this community – including the tricycle riding, slightly creepy Mr. Edwin Spizz.

As Jack and Miss Volker learn more about the history of Norvelt, Jack’s father is actively erasing that history through his employment with the local mortician by physically moving the vacant houses of Norvelt to another town upstate. The eradication of Norvelt escalates when Hells Angels invade the town, burning down houses as revenge for a fallen comrade who was killed on the towns highway. History and progress come to an alarming head as it is discovered that as the houses of Norvelt are disappearing, the elderly of Norvelt are passing away before the town’s very eyes. Through an alarming (and slightly silly) array of events, Mr. Edwin Spizz is discovered to be poisoning the old ladies of Norvelt in order to speed up an old promise made by Miss Volker, that she would marry Spizz when they were the last two original Norvelites.

Through Ganto’s quirky, slightly gory style, readers get a unique sense of this time period with a voice that feels absolutely authentic. Knowing that Gantos did indeed live in Norvelt adds an immense feeling of authenticity to the tale and helps lead readers down the offbeat rabbit hole of romance driven murders. The slang and wholesome cursing like “Cheese-us-crust” (Gantos, 2011, pg. 7) add a warm glow to this supposed wholesome time.

As the summer progresses Jack goes from being a “spineless jellyfish” (Gantos, 2011, pg. 63) of a boy who gets nosebleeds when a car backfires, to a young man who can drive a car, face life head on and take the history he has learned and use it to plot his own unique path in life. Miss Volker states that we will “all be judged by our history” (Gantos, 2011, 23:9) and as Dead End In Norvelt comes to a close, readers see that history is one of the connecting forces of our community and while change is inevitable, history will shape the changes to come.

Awards

·      2012 Newbery Award

·      2012 Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction

Connections

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen is the story of Roy and how he decides to actively work against the generations of Floridians who came before him and assaulted the natural beauty of the Everglades in the name of “progress”. Like Dead End in Norvelt, Hoot illustrates the need to understand the history of our past and use it to actively correct our future. Roy and his friends decide to take a stand to protect a nest of burrowing owls from a commercial development and show people that through preservation we can all grow.

Reviews

Publishers Weekly (07/25/2011):
A bit of autobiography works its way into all of Gantos's work, but he one-ups himself in this wildly entertaining meld of truth and fiction by naming the main character... Jackie Gantos. Like the author, Jackie lives for a time in Norvelt, a real Pennsylvania town created during the Great Depression and based on the socialist idea of community farming. Presumably (hopefully?) the truth mostly ends there, because Jackie's summer of 1962 begins badly: plagued by frequent and explosive nosebleeds, Jackie is assigned to take dictation for the arthritic obituary writer, Miss Volker, and kept alarmingly busy by elderly residents dying in rapid succession. Then the Hells Angels roll in. Gore is a Gantos hallmark but the squeamish are forewarned that Jackie spends much of the book with blood pouring down his face and has a run-in with home cauterization. Gradually, Jackie learns to face death and his fears straight on while absorbing Miss Volker's theories about the importance of knowing history. "The reason you remind yourself of the stupid stuff you've done in the past is so you don't do it again." Memorable in every way.

Booklist (08/01/2011):
Grades 5-8 Looks like a bummer of a summer for 11-year-old Jack (with a same-name protagonist, it's tempting to assume that at least some of this novel comes from the author's life). After discharging his father's WWII-souvenir Japanese rifle and cutting down his mom's fledgling cornfield, he gets grounded for the rest of his life or the rest of the summer of 1962, whichever comes first. Jack gets brief reprieves to help an old neighbor write obituaries for the falling-like-flies original residents of Norvelt, a dwindling coal-mining town. Jack makes a tremendously entertaining tour guide and foil for the town's eccentric citizens, and his warmhearted but lightly antagonistic relationship with his folks makes for some memorable one-upmanship. Gantos, as always, deliver bushels of food for thought and plenty of outright guffaws, though the story gets stuck in neutral for much of the midsection. When things pick up again near the end of the summer, surprise twists and even a quick-dissolve murder mystery arrive to pay off patient readers. Those with a nose for history will be especially pleased

Kirkus Reviews (08/15/2011):

An exhilarating summer marked by death, gore and fire sparks deep thoughts in a small-town lad not uncoincidentally named "Jack Gantos."

The gore is all Jack's, which to his continuing embarrassment "would spray out of my nose holes like dragon flames" whenever anything exciting or upsetting happens. And that would be on every other page, seemingly, as even though Jack's feuding parents unite to ground him for the summer after several mishaps, he does get out. He mixes with the undertaker's daughter, a band of Hell's Angels out to exact fiery revenge for a member flattened in town by a truck and, especially, with arthritic neighbor Miss Volker, for whom he furnishes the "hired hands" that transcribe what becomes a series of impassioned obituaries for the local paper as elderly town residents suddenly begin passing on in rapid succession. Eventually the unusual body count draws the—justified, as it turns out—attention of the police. Ultimately, the obits and the many Landmark Books that Jack reads (this is 1962) in his hours of confinement all combine in his head to broaden his perspective about both history in general and the slow decline his own town is experiencing.

References

Booklist 08/01/2011 pg. 49 (EAN 9780374379933, Hardcover)

Gantos, Jack. 2011. Dead End In Norvelt. New York, NY: Farrar Straus Giroux. ISBN 9780374379933

Hiaasen, Carl. 2002. Hoot. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 9780375821813.

Kirkus Reviews 04/15/2011 (EAN 9780374379933, Hardcover) - *Starred Review

Publishers Weekly 07/25/2011 (EAN 9780374379933, Hardcover) - *Starred Review