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