40 Fun Facts About Dead End in Norvelt

The real town in Dead End in Norvelt was renamed in 1937 to honor which American woman?

Eleanor Roosevelt is hidden in the name: Norvelt joins the last syllables of EleaNOR and RooseVELT. Residents chose it after the First Lady visited their homestead town.

What physical reaction hits young Jack in Dead End in Norvelt every time he feels nervous?

Nosebleeds were real for the author too: Jack Gantos says he was famous as a boy for his splashy ones, with big wads of paper sticking out of his nose.

In Dead End in Norvelt, what does grounded Jack type up for his elderly neighbor Miss Volker?

Obituaries are Miss Volker's passion, and each one ties a dead neighbor's life to an event in history. Her hands no longer work well enough to type, so Jack becomes her scribe.

What does the ticket-writing town busybody ride around on in Jack Gantos's Dead End in Norvelt?

A giant tricycle carries him on his rounds, and he also uses it to deliver home-cooked dinners to the town's oldest residents.

What kills a dancing biker on the road in Dead End in Norvelt, drawing his gang's revenge?

A cement truck crushes him after he is seen dancing for miles down the road. His friends suspect he was murdered to keep the gang from moving into town.

Which sweet treats does Jack suspect are tied to the old ladies' deaths in Dead End in Norvelt?

Girl Scout cookies, Thin Mints above all, are handed out to the town's elderly through the Community Center, so Jack wonders what else might be in them.

While his father builds a runway in Dead End in Norvelt, what is Jack ordered to dig?

A bomb shelter is the father's answer to fears of atomic war in 1962. He never finishes the project and in the end decides not to build it after all.

Which board game sets Jack's parents arguing on his birthday in Dead End in Norvelt?

Monopoly splits the family: Jack's father sees the game as the American dream at work, while his mother says it teaches players to ruin others without caring.

Which top American prize for children's books did Dead End in Norvelt win in 2012?

The Newbery Medal committee praised the novel as an achingly funny romp, and its chair marveled that the deaths of old ladies could be this funny and this tender.

What business does the family of Jack's best friend Bunny run in Dead End in Norvelt?

A funeral parlor is where Bunny Huffer grew up, which explains her endless jokes about dead people. When they first met, she dragged Jack inside and pressed his hand to a dead man's neck.

Which real motorcycle club roars into town seeking revenge in Jack Gantos's Dead End in Norvelt?

Hells Angels arrive after one of their own dies in town, where he had just bought a house from Miss Volker. Rumor says they put a curse on the place.

When his father's war rifle goes off in Dead End in Norvelt, what is Jack pretending to shoot at?

A drive-in movie screen showing a war film is his target, watched from the yard through binoculars. Jack had no idea the Japanese rifle was loaded.

In which US state is the real town of Norvelt, where Jack Gantos set his prize-winning novel?

Pennsylvania is home to Norvelt, a small community in the state's southwest. Gantos was born in nearby Mount Pleasant and lived in Norvelt until he was seven.

What condition has ruined Miss Volker's hands in Dead End in Norvelt, so that she needs a typist?

Arthritis has crippled her fingers, so she dictates while Jack types. Gantos says a real woman filled Miss Volker's role in town, though that was not her name.

Who confesses to poisoning the last original residents at the end of Dead End in Norvelt?

Mr. Spizz admits the murders to Miss Volker while holding her captive, then flees with a long head start on the police.

Why does the killer in Dead End in Norvelt poison the town's last original residents?

To win a bride, he turns to murder: Miss Volker once said she would marry him only when every original Norvelter was dead, so he hurries them along.

The real Norvelt was built in the 1930s to give which laid-off workers a fresh start?

Coal miners from nearby company towns were the target. Each family got a house with a few acres, a grape arbor and a chicken coop, and was expected to grow its own food.

Norvelt, the town at the heart of Jack Gantos's novel, was founded under which federal program?

The New Deal seeded nearly 100 planned homestead communities for out-of-work families, and Norvelt was the fourth. Its houses came with electricity and running water.

Which costume does Jack wear to sneak out at night and meet Bunny in Dead End in Norvelt?

The Grim Reaper mask and robe hide him as he escapes through an unused chute in the basement. Bunny then tells him her father plans a new development called Hufferville.

Whose wartime PT-109 rescue does Jack read about during his grounding in Dead End in Norvelt?

John F. Kennedy, president during that summer of 1962, saved his torpedo boat crew in the Solomon Islands despite his own injuries. Jack's father had served in the same islands.

When Jack first walks in on Miss Volker in Dead End in Norvelt, what are her hands soaking in?

Hot paraffin wax is her way of getting stiff fingers to move. Jack thinks she is melting the flesh off her own hands and faints on the spot.

On the final flight in Dead End in Norvelt, what do Jack and his father drop from the plane?

Balloons of red paint are their bombs. Jack soon finds the prank uncomfortable and asks his father to take him back to the ground.

What does Jack mow down on his father's orders in Dead End in Norvelt, enraging his mother?

The cornfield was his mother's way of feeding needy neighbors, so cutting it down costs Jack his summer. He feels cowardly for telling her that his father made him do it.

Which small airplane does Jack's father bring home in Dead End in Norvelt and build a runway for?

A Piper J-3 Cub is the plane, bought for just $25 by a father who is a World War II veteran. Jack goes up in it in the story's final scene.

Which gift, found poisoned in Miss Volker's basement, puts her under arrest in Dead End in Norvelt?

A box of chocolates from an admirer was never meant for people: she dusted the sweets with rat poison herself and left them downstairs for the vermin.

Besides writing for the newspaper, which official post does Miss Volker hold in Dead End in Norvelt?

Medical examiner and chief nurse are the jobs she was given when the town began. She promised to keep records on its first residents until the last one died.

Which badly behaved cat stars in the picture books that launched Jack Gantos's career in 1976?

Rotten Ralph, drawn by Nicole Rubel, reached print only after a string of rejections that Gantos calls well deserved. The two began making picture books while he was in college.

Which boy with ADHD is the hero of five Jack Gantos novels, starting with one about a swallowed key?

Joey Pigza first appeared in 1998 in a novel that became a National Book Award finalist. His fifth and final book followed in 2014.

What homemade dish makes Jack's mother a murder suspect in Jack Gantos's Dead End in Norvelt?

Casseroles made with wild mushrooms she picks near the town dump go out to the old ladies, and most of the dead are found with one half-eaten.

Which label does Jack's father pin on Norvelt in Jack Gantos's novel, mocking its ideals of sharing?

A Commie town is his verdict on a place built on neighbors helping neighbors. He came home from the war wanting money and success, and he longs to move away.

How does the motorcycle gang take revenge on the town in Jack Gantos's Dead End in Norvelt?

Burning houses is their answer: the first to go up is the very home the dead biker had bought, and Jack's father dashes out in the night to help fight the flames.

Which old newspaper column by Miss Volker does Jack read every morning in Dead End in Norvelt?

This Day in History is Jack's favorite part of the paper. Miss Volker wrote the entries years ago when her hands were good, and the paper simply reprints them.

Which real nonfiction series for young readers does grounded Jack devour in Dead End in Norvelt?

Landmark Books fill his hours of confinement in 1962, and what he reads broadens his view of history and of the slow decline of his own town.

To which state are empty Norvelt houses being moved in Jack Gantos's Dead End in Norvelt?

West Virginia is where the houses are bound. Bunny's father is buying up the empty homes and moving them, and Miss Volker complains as her town is carted off.

Which Jack Gantos memoir tells of the prison term he served as a young man for smuggling drugs?

Hole in My Life covers the eighteen months he spent behind bars before college. It was later named an honor book for both the Printz Award and the Sibert Medal.

Which Founding Father's ideal of small self-sufficient farms inspired homestead towns like Norvelt?

Thomas Jefferson believed a family with fertile land could always feed itself in hard times, a lesson Miss Volker passes on to Jack in the novel.

Which anarchist partner of Alexander Berkman does Miss Volker praise in Dead End in Norvelt?

Emma Goldman is one of the social reformers Miss Volker says schools never teach. Her history lessons to Jack favor fighters for workers' rights over the usual heroes.

What was the town of Norvelt called when the government founded it in 1934, before its renaming?

Westmoreland Homesteads took its name from the county. Over 1,850 families applied for its 250 places, and those chosen were put to work building the houses they would live in.

What did Jack Gantos read in sixth grade that made him decide he could do better and start writing?

His sister's diary struck him as something he could beat, so he begged his mother for one of his own and filled it with stories overheard outside the teachers' lounge.

Which prize for children's historical fiction went to Dead End in Norvelt in 2012?

The Scott O'Dell Award arrived in the same season as its better-known medal, and in Britain the novel made the eight-book longlist for the Guardian children's fiction prize.