Dead End in Norvelt

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 age.

He'd just come out with a new Rotten Ralph book and I thought that was it. Then I heard a fan congratulate him on his new YA novel, raving about it in the way that readers often do when confronted with a book author, so I wasn't terribly sure whether the new book was really worth seeking out. After all, I'd never even checked out any of the Joey Pigza books; I really think I'd forgotten Jack Gantos was even connected with them.

And then Dead End in Norvelt wins the Newbery this week. Then it's a done deal; I read every Newbery.

It came in for me at the library yesterday and I immediately started to read.

What a yummy book. Hilariously funny in a Richard Peck-ish, A Christmas Story-ish kind of way. You've got your main character, a boy Jack Gantos imaginatively names Jack Gantos, living in a town named Norvelt, the town Gantos actually grew up in, in the early sixties, who manages to shoot off a Japanese rifle from WWII and get himself grounded for the entire summer. His parents only give him dispensation to help out an arthritic old lady with her obituary writing for the paper. But this kid somehow, during the course of this summer, meets up with the Hells Angels, a funeral home, murders, digs a bomb shelter, drops water balloons from a vintage plane, gets his blood-dripping nose cauterized, and writes the most incredibly interesting obituaries I've ever seen.

Crazy-funny.

Wonderfully funny and engaging historical fiction. And I loved the strong doses of American social/labor history. Viva Eleanor Roosevelt! Not sure how much teen appeal this has? I guess historical fiction does have its young fans (I was one, after all), but it might be for a more limited audience. It might appeal more widely to adults, actually.

Updated Review, May 2020:I was shocked when I saw my original rating for this book was 3 stars. In my memory, it was a 5-star read. I was tempted to up the rating to 5 stars on reread, but settled on 4 as a compromise. I really enjoyed this book the second time and immediately checked out the sequel on Hoopla.Also, for anyone reading in the spring/summer of 2020, there is a small part at the very end when one of the characters describes what the USA was like during the 1918 flu, and it is eerie. It feels delightfully serendipitous that I would have chosen this year to revisit this one. Original Review, April 2012:I kind of expected more out of this book, the Newbery Medal winner for 2012. Although it was similar in theme to another Newbery contender, [b:Okay for Now 9165406 Okay for Now Gary D. Schmidt http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1327889281s/9165406.jpg 14044509] it was not nearly as good. The setting was not utilized to the fullest, mainly because young hero Jack is grounded and doesn't wander around all that much. Furthermore, I do not think this will go over so well with its intended audience. It's historical fiction, but the history is not that interesting.