Hesse, Karen. (1998). Out of the Dust. New York: Scholastic Inc. 227 pp.

Grade Range: 6-12

Genre: historical fiction

Summary and Critique

This is the story of 14-year-old Billie Jo Kelby, who tells the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in the Oklahoma Panhandle during the dust bowl years of the Depression. Billie Jo and her parents are barely making a living as the winds and dust continually destroys their wheat crop. One of the small pleasures in her life is when Billie Jo plays her beloved piano; however, a terrible accident deprives Billie Jo of this pleasure. While cooking breakfast one morning, Billie Jo's pregnant mother mistakes a bucket of kerosene for a bucket of water and catches on fire. Billie Jo wanting to help grabs the bucket and ends up splashing her mother with even more kerosene. Her mother and newborn brother die leaving behind Billie Jo, who has badly burned and scared hands, and her embittered father. No longer able to play her piano and growing ever more distant from her father, Billie Jo catches a train headed west, and realizes that there is no getting out of the dust of Oklahoma or her home.

Written in free verse, Hesse exquisitely crafts a compelling and gut wrenching novel. The story is grim but the writing is so superb that Billie Jo comes to life with such tremendous courage, spirit, strength, and emotion. The book is organized like a diary with dated entries that span one year from the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935. The choice of free verse is brilliant and enables the reader to experience both the pains and joys in meticulously worded poetic phrases. This book is a great choice for classrooms involved in journal-writing assignments and could easily be performed as readers' theater because of the almost lyric quality of the prose. It is excellent for discussion, and because Hess has the outstanding ability to weave historical facts into fiction, many of the poems could be used as powerful supplements to history lessons on the 1930's, the Depression or the Dust Bowl.

Awards

Newbery Medal

Scott O'Dell Historical Fiction Award

American Library Association Notable Books for Children

American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults

School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

Booklist Editors'Choice

Book Links"Lasting Connection"

Publisher's Weekly Best Book of the Year

New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing selection

Themes/Topics

Families

Challenges and Triumphs

Author Information

Hesse was raised in Maryland and attended the University of Maryland where she received a Bachelor's degree in English. Her fifth-grade teacher's encouragement inspired Hesse to become a professional writer. It took her thirty years of writing on the side and working assorted jobs before realizing her goal. Some of Hesse's other works include Letters From Rifka (1992), Phoenix Rising (1994), A Time of Angels (1995), The Music of Dolphins (1996), Just Juice (1998), Stowaway (2000), and Witness (2001). Currently Hesse and her family reside in Vermont.

For more information on Karen Hesse:

http://www.kidsreads.com/authors/au-hesse-karen.asp - A biographical sketch of Karen Hesse

http://www.scholastic.com/titles/outofthedust/speech.htm Scholastic presents a transcript of Hesse's speech delivered June 27, 1998 after winning the Newbery medal for Out of the Dust.

Media Connections

Movies/Documentaries

Eleanor and Franklin: The White House Years (1977) Focuses on the twelve year period that Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt occupied the White House.

Places in the Heart (1984) A widow, her children, a wandering African-American man, and a blind man must work together to prevent Edna Spalding from losing her farm during the Great Depression.

The Grapes of Wrath (1940) The Joad family relocates from Oklahoma to California after losing their farm during the Great Depression.

Riding the Rails (2003) An account of the 250,000 homeless teenagers riding the rails during the Great Depression.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime? (1975) This documentary explores life during the Depression using Hollywood films and newsreel footage but no narration.

Television

The Waltons (1972) A small-town Virginia family experiences the trials and tribulations of life during the Great Depression.

Music

Dust Bowl Ballads. Lyrics by Woody Guthrie. Buddha, 2000. Guthrie sings about his experiences, both positive and negative, in Oklahoma during the Great Depression.

Online Resources

http://www2.scholastic.com/teachers/authorsandbooks/authorstudies/authorhome.jhtml?authorID=45&collateralID=5183&displayName=Biography Scholastic presents biographical information, a booklist and interview transcript of Karen Hesse.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/dustbowl/ Official site of The American Experience: Surviving the Dust Bowl information, activities and plans.

http://www.carolhurst.com/titles/outofthedust.html Reviews, activity ideas, and related book information.

http://wneo.org/WebQuests/TeacherWebQuests/dustbowl/dustbowl.htm A WebQuest for Out of the Dust.

http://www.eduscapes.com/newbery/98a.html Lesson plan ideas for Out of the Dust.

http://newdeal.feri.org/ A photo gallery with images from the Great Depression.

http://www.drought.unl.edu/whatis/dustbowl.htm Information about the drought of the 1930s.

Related Texts

Stanley, Jerry. (1992). Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp. New York: Crown. 85pp. A non-fiction account of families that relocated from Oklahoma to California, the hardships they faced living in federal labor camps, and their willingness to erect a school so their children could be educated.

Meltzer, Milton. (2000). Driven from the Land: The Story of the Dust Bowl. New York: Benchmark Books. 111pp. Offers explanations for the causes and effects of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.

Nishi, Dennis. (1998). Life During the Great Depression. San Diego: Lucent. 96pp. Nishi focuses on ordinary people and how the Great Depression affected their lives.

Stein, R. Conrad. (1994). The Great Depression. New York: Scholastic. 32pp. A general overview of the Great Depression.

Grimes, Janice Brown. (1998). A Different World: Almena, Kansas 1930-1939. Whitestone, VA: Brandylane. 316pp. Explores life in a small town in Kansas during the Dust Bowl.

Janke, Katelan. (2002). Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, 1935. New York: Scholastic. 186pp.Twelve-year old Grace Edwards describes the joys and hardships of life in the Texas during the Dust Bowl.

Turner, Ann. (1995). Dust for Dinner. New York: Harper Collins. Illustrated by Robert Barrett. 64pp. An easy-to-read fictitious account of a family forced to move to California because of the drought and the Great Depression.


Durbin, William. (2002). The Journal of C. J. Jackson, a Dust Bowl Migrant, Oklahoma to California, 1935. New York: Scholastic. 169pp. My Name Is America series. Description of a migrant family during the Great Depression as told by a thirteen-year old boy.

Coombs, Karen Mueller. (2000). Children of the Dust Days. Minneapolis: Carolrhoda Books. 48pp. A primarily pictorial account of the Dust Bowl.

Hesse, Karen. (1999). Come On, Rain! New York: Scholastic. 32pp. Illustrated by Jon J. Muth. A refreshing rain storm provides relief for the members of an urban neighborhood.

Teaching Ideas

(1) "Visualizing Poetry" Focuses on the senses, emotions, and imagination as a way to appreciate poetry. Students are given blank sheets of paper and are asked to form mental pictures from the words of the poem. Line by line, students sketch each image, write down descriptive words and associations beside their pictures and discover connections. This technique provides a visual aid, which triggers associations and assists understanding.

[Summarized/adapted from "Picturing a Poem: An Alternative Approach to Appreciating Poetry" by Jane Ellen Glasser in Classroom Notes Plus. Urbana, IL National Council of Teachers of English. October 1991, p.7.]

(2) "Responding to Criticism" Focuses on a way to establish a strong interpretive community within the classroom. Students create meanings from texts and critique them from the viewpoint of their own interpretive community. The lesson is divided into five steps and include responding to the readings in meaningful ways, combining responses into a master list, categorizing the responses, giving reports to the class and then holding class discussions.

[Summarized/adapted from "From Response to Criticism" by Marti Singer in Classroom Notes Plus. Urbana, IL National Council of Teachers of English. November 1989, p.11.]

(3) "Wall of Writing" Focuses on creativity and imagination in order to design and make a display for student writing and artwork on a particular unit of study. The writing mural is one giant scene that covers the back wall of the classroom. Teachers and students brainstorm together what kind of scene they would like to create and what people and/or objects they want in the scene. Each student makes one object and a piece of writing triggered by that object or by the theme of the scene as a whole.

[Summarized/adapted from "The Writing Mural" by La Val Siegert in Classroom Notes Plus. Urbana, IL National Council of Teachers of English. December 1992, p.2.]

(4) "Sharing an Emotional Bond" Focuses on the use of journal writing to help students identify basic emotions and recognize these emotions in the short stories or novels they read. Prior to reading a particular literary work, students explore the emotion expressed in that text by writing about their own personal experience with that same emotion.

[Summarized/adapted from "Sharing Common Emotions" by Shirley R. Chafin in IDEAS Plus, Book Three. Urbana, IL National Council of Teachers of English. November 1985, p.23.]

(Review written by Karen Guajardo Ritch and edited by Jennifer E. Moore)