Dead End in Norvelt - Must Read!

Every once in a while, I come across a book that forces me to neglect all of my parental duties because it it so good.  5th Wave was one, and Dead End in Norvelt was another!  I could not put it down!  It was a fun, different read (AND it was historical fiction, which I love).  Imagine the summer vacation you are having now.  Now imagine being grounded for your entire summer vacation for something your dad made you do. That is how Jack's 1962 summer is going - his dad made him mow down his mom's cornfield (which she grew to help feed the elderly residents of the town, by the way) in order to make way for a landing strip for his plane.  Jack is done for.  There's not many kids in town for him to play with anyway, but now his hopes of getting out and playing with his one friend, Bunny, are dashed.  Did I mention that most of the residents of the town are elderly women?  Jack's one hope to get out springs when his mom loans him out to help Miss Volker write obituaries for the residents as they die off in the town.  She's a crazy old lady who must immerse her hands in hot wax in order to get them to work due to terrible arthritis - I pictured one of those hand candles that people burn around Halloween...creeptastic!  Never will you see one person get so excited for people to die.  You see, once all of the original members of the town die, Miss Volker will have fulfilled her promise to Eleanor Roosevelt, who helped found the town, that she would nurture it until the end.  Once all of the originals die, Miss Volker can move to Florida to be with her sister.  The town members seem to be dying off pretty quickly, almost too quickly, except for the fiesty, self-appointed town rule-keeper, Mr. Spizz.  Mr. Spizz rides his man-tricycle all over town enforcing the rules and also secretly trying to get Miss Volker to fall in love with him.  Jack's life gets some excitement as he gets to know Miss Volker and accompany on her travels to witness the bodies of the dead town folk (she's also the medical examiner for the town), help her write their obituaries and then hand them off the the printer in town.  Mix that with a night sneaking out with this best friend, a scary encounter with a Hell's Angel motorcyclist, driving under age and poisoning critters with a heavy duty poison (critter bodies EVERYWHERE), you might almost miss that something isn't right in town...and it's not the fact that a grown man is riding a tricycle.  Read to find out what happens to Jack during his exciting summer in 1962!  Jack Gantos is a fabulous writer for boys, so if you are a boy who has a hard time finding something to read, give this book a try! Dead bodies and Hell's Angels burning down houses?  I mean come on...