Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos

It wasn't until I began reading Chapter 21 that I understood why Dead End in Norvelt, by Jack Gantos, was selected for this year's Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award.  Gantos, an accomplished children's author (the Joey Pigzza series), has produced a history lesson infused with ambitious, edgy, and witty characters, creating an aboundingly thoughtful and original story prolific in humor.

"Jackie," she growled when I opened the door and found her in her pink chenille bathrobe.  "Take a letter.  I have to put that ignorant man in his place."

I flew down the hall to my room and got a notebook and pencil and returned to the kitchen table.  I raised my pencil above the paper and froze into the same position a doctor holds just before he jabs a scalpel into a patient.

"History," she started with her voice strong and confident as ever, "often sheds more light on the present than on the past...so let us not panic like a bunch of Chicken Littles and feel the sky falling, but instead put our energy into keeping Norvelt alive.  People will pass on, but we must preserve our history. ..History is a form of nature, like the mountains and sea and sky.  History began when the universe began with the "Big Bang"...but every living soul is a book of their own history, which sits on the ever-growing shelf in the library of human memories.  Sadly, we don't know the history of every person who ever lived...But here in Norvelt we had one of those librarians who collected the tiniest books of human history."

Follow-up this novel with the 2012 Oscar-nominated short animated film, "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore", "a poignant, humorous allegory about the curative powers of story."