No Place Like Norvelt

Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos, FSG, 2011, 341 pages.  Age/interest level: 10-13. (2012 Newbery Medal winner)

Norvelt, PA, 1962: a depression-era-town that’s slowly dying, along with its many elderly residents.  Jack Gantos is one of the few kids—enough to fill a baseball roster—but at the beginning of the summer it looks like he won’t be playing baseball because he’s been grounded.  For the whole summer.  He didn’t know the gun was loaded!  It wasn’t his fault!

To make things even worse, he’s practically been sold into slavery to his next-door-neighbor, Miss Volker, who appears to be nuts—when he comes over the first time, she’s melting her hands in a kettle on the stove.  But it’s only wax, applied to give her arthritic hands a few minutes of flexibility.  Arthritis is the main reason she needs Jack: he will be her hands for the summer.  And one of his primary duties will be writing obituaries.

Once the town nurse, Miss Volker is now its coroner.  She’s nurtured the town of Norvelt ever since the place was established as decent working-class housing by EleaNOR RooseVELT (get it?), but there’s less need now for nurturing than there is for commemorating.  Miss V. dictates, Jack types, and we should all get such obituaries.  They relate not only to the history of the deceased but also to historical events, such as Wat Tyler’s Rebellion, Anne Frank, Hiroshima, and Japanese internment.

As old ladies drop like flies, people start to wonder if foul play could be involved.  Could it be the curse of the Hell’s Angels, who lost one of their own in Norvelt and returned for revenge? Could it have something to do with the rat poison folks are buying, or the questionable mushrooms?  Why is the funeral director buying up empty houses and moving them to other locations?  Why are other houses mysteriously burning?  Before too long Jack can honestly say, “I’m having an interesting summer,” and certainly there’s a lot going on.  What there isn’t, is a focused plot.  There are recurring plot elements, such as Jack’s volcanic nosebleeds (carry a handkerchief, kid!) and stories of bloody conquest from the Landmark History series, and death.  And gradually we get the idea these things are related, and those who do not learn from it are doomed to repeat it.  It’s kinda interesting and kinda weird and kinda funny, and abruptly ends with the moral spelled out.

Jack Gantos, the author not the character, is best known for his Joey Pigza books, about an engaging ADHD kid whom you have to love but would hate to live with.  Eccentric old ladies are also part of his repertoire–such as Joey Pigza’s grandmother, who got so frustrated with Joey on one memorable occasion that she pulled all the food out of the fridge and stuffed him inside to cool down.  (Fortunately, she cooled down first.)  I get the impression a lot of the population of Norvelt are drawn from life, if slightly exaggerated—including, of course, Jack Gantos (the character, not the author).  Life is the best place to draw characters from, but these don’t cooperate with the plot.  What’s up with the undertaker?  Or Uncle Will, the crazy vet?  Why is murder treated like a mere personality quirk at the end?

One reason this year’s Newbery committee chose Norvelt is its value-of-history theme.  That’s probably why it won the Scott O’Dell Award for historical fiction this year, too.  But Miss Volker, the town historian, isn’t interested in learning from history so much as  preaching from it: “There are over four thousand religions in the world, so it is impossible to claim that one God is more powerful than another God.  Keep in mind that there are plenty of good civilizations full of God-worshipping people that are now lost to history.  The American Indians were nicer than the settlers and look where it got them.  Dead!”  The author isn’t necessarily using her as a mouthpiece, but as the town’s most sympathetic character, she gets plenty of soapbox time: “Boy, I love it when I get mad.”  Since Eleanor Roosevelt is her patron saint, we know where she’s coming from, but kids in the target age won’t.  Besides, our political discourse today includes far too many people who love getting mad, and it’s not cute or picturesque.  Nothing against Jack Gantos (the character or the author), but this is a book I would skip.