Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos is about a boy named Jack who is eleven years old and lives with his Mom, Dad, horse and turkeys. He lives in Norvelt, a really small town in Pennsylvania that’s named after Eleanor Roosevelt. His Dad was in the army so he has some rifles that Jack accidentally shot himself with.

Jack’s problem is that his Dad is worried that the Russians would attack them so  he wanted to protect the town by building a bomb shelter in their backyard but too do that Jack has to cut down his Mom’s cornfield. That’s why his Mom grounds him for the summer.  He spends his summer digging a bomb shelter and helping Miss Volker. Miss Volker was given a job by Eleanor Roosevelt to be the town health helper. Every time a person dies she calls Jack to write an obituary (it’s a news article that reports the recent death of a person ) of that person. Jack then takes it to Mr. Greene, who runs the newspaper, to print in the next newspaper. Whenever he goes to Mr. Greene, Mr. Greene says, “There’s only one reason why you could be here.”.

I really enjoyed the book. It takes a while to read since each page has a lot of information so you have to re-read a lot of pages. I mostly enjoyed it because it’s really funny, for example, Bunny, who’s Jack’s friend, makes Jack touch a dead person. There are other parts I enjoyed, especially when Jack’s Dad lands a plane he won while gambling in right field and when Miss Volker does an operation on Jack. You would enjoy this book if you don’t mind people dying because a lot of people die in it. I would give this book five out of five stars since it’s so funny!