Dead End in Norvelt

This year's Newbery Award Winner is a strange, quirky adventure in the sleepy 1960s town of Norvelt, Pensylvannia—a dying "Eleanor Roosevelt" town created decades before by the former First Lady as a place for down-and-out Americans to be able to have a home of their own. The story follows the unusual escapades of preteen Jack Gantos, grounded for the whole summer. Dead End in Norvelt is a blend of the odd, the macabre, and the heartwarming. I have to admit that I didn't love the book as much as the Newbery committees obviously did; it took me a long time to feel like I connected with Jack at all, and I wasn't overly fond of the continual macabre focus on death. By the time the book ended, however, I was entertained and even a little touched by the way it all wrapped up. One thing is for certain: Dead End in Norvelt isn't quite like any book I've read before!

Profanity/Language: 6 religious exclamations; 3 mild profanities.

There were 8 instances of a character's invented slang--created to substitue for a religious exclamation (a boy repeatedly exclaims "Cheeze-us-crust"!). There are several (10-15) references to the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, which were not tallied as mild profanities.

Violence/Gore: A boy watches war movies and plays with war memorabilia. A boy shoots a gun (nobody is hurt). A story is told about an Indian scalping (the story is told humorously and without violent detail). A character "cooks" their hands in hot wax to help with arthritis (another character is very disturbed on seeing this for the first time, and the scene is a little gruesome/macabre in a madcap way). One character is the child of a mortician and often tries to scare her friends by describing the cadavers. Throughout the story there are several obituaries read. A character reads history books that include a lot of violent/gory stories. A character (who you don't meet or know anything about prior to his death) is found run over by a truck, apparently "smashed flat," and one child describes to another in fairly gruesome detail what his body looks like. A series of fires (arson) are set in the town, and a group of people make threats against people in the town. A character threatens a boy. There are rumors of murders. Two scenes involve hunting and/or poaching. A woman is found to be poisoned.

Sex/Nudity: Characters flirt; a boy thinks that a girl is pretty and that he "likes" her.

Death, parental conflict, murder. A few brief references are made to the Hells Angels being devil worshippers.

A kid smokes a cigarette.