Dead End in Norvelt (Norvelt, #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Feb 05, 2012 Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance rated it really liked it

Shelves: children-s-books

There are authors you suspect must be dead. Face it, when you haven’t heard anything from an author in years, you think they must have passed on and perhaps you just missed seeing the obit.

I thought Jack Gantos was dead. Well, I thought he was dead until I saw him at last fall’s Texas Book Festival, alive, amazingly, with Elvis Costello glasses and shirt and pants, like was an image straight from the Kennedy sixties. Oddly, he wasn’t a geezer, either, just a older fellow, very close to my own ag ...more

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Sep 12, 2021 Linda Martin rated it did not like it

Shelves: geo-pennsylvania, historical-fiction, gaaaaaah, tweens, fiction, newbery-medal-winners, 2021

I think it is safe to say I was not the intended audience for this book. I am an old woman, not a 12-year-old boy. I thought this book was horrible. It features lots of death, death, death in multiple manifestations with a little gross vulgar humor mixed in with the gallows so-called humor, and a sprinkling of pure idiocy such as the ending that didn't make much sense to me. The father was a total jerk in so many ways, I would have left him but I couldn't because I wasn't the one married to him. ...more

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Dec 23, 2014 Katie rated it did not like it

Shelves: newbery, male-author

Ugh. I really did not like this book. It is the 2012 Newbery winner and told from the point of view of Jack, a boy growing up in the 1960s in a planned community. He is grounded for for the summer and spends the summer helping Miss Volker, a quirky original resident of the town, write obituaries. The book is supposed to be funny, there are a lot of quirky characters and boyish humor that might appeal to kids, but I couldn't get past the fact that I really hated the father in this book, and I don ...more

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