PDF Dead End in Norvelt Norvelt Series Jack Gantos Books

Product details Series Norvelt Series (Book 1) Paperback 384 pages Publisher Square Fish; First edition (May 7, 2013) Language English ISBN-10 1250010233

Dead End in Norvelt Norvelt Series Jack Gantos Books Reviews

• The first clue that Dead End in Norvelt is funny is that the main character, Jack Gantos, has the same name as the author. The second clue is that comedy writer Dave Barry calls this "a brilliant book." By the time I'd read about 20 pages, I wasn't sure I could finish the book because I spent so much time laughing my head off. One night I couldn't sleep, so I got up at 3 a.m. and spent the next hour laughing hysterically as I read. Humor aside, the book is filled with odd bits of history that initially seem irrelevant but then suddenly make sense. In fact, history - national, local, and personal - is half the point of the book as Jack says, "The reason you remind yourself of the stupid stuff you've done in the past is so you don't do it again." I thoroughly enjoyed Dead End in Norvelt, and Jack is definitely a kid I'd like to know.
• As a boy, Jack was enjoying his summer vacation, when bang! Everything when up in a smoke. After firing a "somehow loaded" Japanese sniper rifle toward a movie screen, his summer was just getting worse. His mother, a citizen of Norvelt since she was born, had Jack to go to a neighbor's home up in 600AM for a kind satisfaction of her rules help your neighbor. After helping Mrs. Volker for a day, Jack decides it might not be bad at all until now, when he is sure he needs to help her.
  As his WWII veteran father returns to home with an army surplus J-3, he asks Jack to mow down his mother's precious cornfield to make a runaway and a bomb shelter. Already on the risk with his gun accident and his overwhelming will to get on board in the plane, Jack mows down the corn and gets into a serious trouble with his mother grounded for summer. Now, not only he cannot contribute to the baseball team, his only way of escape is by doing chores and helping neighbors.
  
  By helping Mrs. Volker, he had a rather interesting summer. As he helped her, or should I say, typed the obituaries Mrs. Volker spoke to him, he soaked in all the necessary histories about Norvelt and learned to respect history. However, this book is not always peaceful. As all the original Norvelters started to die off in a very quick rate, rumors spread on town of the crazy dance diesis coming back to life to haunt them, or that the town is cursed. This mystery draws Jack deeply into risks of another trouble, and events.
  
  Leaving out the unusual case of frequent nose bloodsheds, Jack is considered a usual boy looking to spend the summer vacation in his own way, enjoying every bits instead of having to have to worry about watch his back every time. This is a very fun book to read, especially for a early-teenager like me. It has enough twists and turns for chapters that every time one cools down, other starts. I tried to listen it in an audio book instead, but it did not work because I had to pause every bits since I was laughing my head off way higher than the audio itself.
  
  Again, highly recommended you will find yourself/past self as Jack and laugh along as he tries to set things right. ^^
• I laughed so hard at certain passages that the tears came, and there were even more laughs when I read it aloud to my husband.
  
  The book is tightly woven from the point of view of a good-natured eleven- (then twelve-) year old boy growing up in the early '60s, a bit used and abused by the adults in his world.
  
  The writing is wonderful, and in my opinion the author's metaphors and similes are often dazzling "I could see the flames leaping into the air, and the confetti of glowing ash that floated above the flames...[The]blistering flames rising above the house...waving goodbye to everyone who was watching." About old, arthritic Mrs. Volker "When she finished she plopped down onto her couch like a string puppet that had been cut loose. All her jumbled pieces slumped into herself, and with her forehead pressed against her tucked-up knees she fell into a deep sleep."
  
  The unity of the book is complete, dealing, as it does, with the boy's obsession with death -- his own, the death of the town, the deaths of the town's old people, the death-work of the embalmer....
  
  The main characters and secondary characters including the boy's mother, Mrs. Volker, Bunny, and Mr. Spizz are endearing and funny, and unlikely to be forgotten.
  
  Having said all that, I'm not so sure that this is really a kid's book; at the end, when the mystery is solved, there is no moral payoff. Someone is outed, but there is no real consequences to the person's ill deeds. Life goes on -- or not, actually -- with little shock or horror, whereas the rest of the book deals, humorously, with right vs wrong.
  
  It's really a terrific book, if for adults. The best part is that it's tear-inducing hilarious.
• Jack is caught between his arguing parents. His mother has grounded him for firing a Japanese gun his father owned. She has also volunteered him to help Mrs. Volker, a neighbor who writes obituaries.
  Mrs. Volker has arthritis in her hands and can no longer write or type up the obituaries for the Norvelt News. Through the obituaries she tells the history of the deceased. The deceased have recently become the original women of the town of Norvelt. Jack loves this new job since he loves history. He has one problem, if he gets overly excited his nose will begin to bleed. As the elderly women of Norvelt begin to drop like flies, people are beginning to wonder if it is murder. Mrs. Volker examines the bodies and pronounces each death that of natural causes. Not everyone is convinced. Could she be hiding something? This was a wonderful book full of history and lessons that the reader won't mind learning. The mystery was enough to keep you reading, yet not so difficult you couldn't figure it out. Highly recommended reading.