#8--Dead End in Norvelt--Jack Gantos

I happened to pick up a newspaper today from last week and was flipping through it when I noticed an article announcing the 2012 Newbery and Caldecott winners.  The Newbery Award had been given to Jack Gantos for his book, Dead End in Norvelt.  I knew we had a few copies of this book because I had purchased them after attending a conference on new young adult literature in the fall.  I quickly went to the stacks and grabbed one of the copies off the shelf to bring home with me.

This story is part fiction and part nonfiction....and I would love to know exactly where the line is drawn!  The main character, Jack Gantos, has started off his summer vacation grounded for life!  His prospects aren't looking good for an early release when his father makes him mow down his mother's corn field...which makes his mom clamp down even further in his punishment.  He is only allowed out of his room to do chores, use the bathroom, possibly eat meals with his family, and to help his neighbor Miss Volker write obituaries for the town paper.  The town of Norvelt was named for First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, because of her interest in the town--it was created out of the Great Depression as a way for the unemployed miners to get "a hand-up instead of a hand-out."  There were 250 original families in Norvelt and Miss Volker has vowed to write the obituaries for all the old-timers and be the last one standing--she is also the medical examiner, a post she was given by Mrs. Roosevelt and one she takes very seriously.

Jack has a "tiny problem"--his nose squirts blood anytime he gets startled, spooked or over-excited.  Add to this, Miss Volker has arthritis so bad that she has to warm up her hands in hot parafin wax so they work--the first time Jack sees this creates a rather amusing scene, as he believes she is melting her body parts off to be eaten.  And his best friend is a girl--who is the daughter of the local undertaker, and enjoys torturing Jack with stories of dead bodies and other gross things.  Oh, and these's also someone buying up the old houses in Norvelt and moving them to West Virginia, and even the possibility of a murder investigation too.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book, and I will be sharing it with students in the very near future.

I looked up Norvelt, PA, and discovered that the town actually exists in Westmoreland County, southeast of Pittsburgh, PA.  It also looks like much of the historical facts offered up by Miss Volker to Jack as they write obituaries and Jack learns to drive her car (very under-age), are pretty acurate....which makes me wonder even more how much of the rest of this story is fact and how much of it is fiction!!

Happy Reading!