"cheese - us - crust"

4th grader's diorama of Dead End in Norvelt.
Thanks Nat!

I just finished reading the 2012 Newbery Award winner, Dead End In Norvelt by Jack Gantos... starring, Jack Gantos. This book is at once semi-autobiographical and "wildly fictional". It features obituaries, a lot of dead senior citizens, Hell's Angels, underage driving, shooting antique guns, war stories, history, rat poison, a whole lot of nose bleeds... and as the picture above illustrates - the destruction of a corn field.

Jack is an 11-year-old boy who is torn between wanting to do things and being a coward... his nose always gives his fears away.

Over the course of one summer in 1962, Jack learns that actions have consequences... and that history and the future are part of the same time line.

To listen to Jack Gantos reading chapter one of Dead End In Norvelt, click here.