Dead End in Norvelt

Blurb

Dead End in Norvelt is an autobiographical novel by the American author Jack Gantos, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2011. It features a boy named Jack Gantos and is based partly on the author's childhood in Norvelt, Pennsylvania. According to one reviewer, the "real hero" is "his home town and its values", a "defiantly political" message.
The American Library Association awarded Gantos and Dead End the 2012 Newbery Medal, honoring the book as the year's "most distinguished contribution to American literature for children". It also won the annual Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. In Britain, where it was published by the Transworld Publishers imprint Corgi Books, it was one of eight books on the longlist for the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize.
Newbery judges called the book "achingly funny" and one British reviewer called it "rib-splitting".