Out of the Dust

Hesse, Karen. Out of the Dust. Read by Marika Masburn. Listening Library, 2006.

Through the voice of a fifteen-year old, Karen Hesse relates the times and trials of living in the dust bowl during the Great Depression. Through short poems, Billie Jo relates her family's hardships of trying to raise wheat during this hard time. No rain, just dust, washes over the fields day after day. The family struggles for survival, all the while helping others when they can. Even after a tragedy strikes the family and begins to tear it apart, you feel for Billie Jo as you watch her pull herself through the trying times.

Hesse does a magnificent job creating the images of the dust, the wheat, and the family itself. Using concise language in this free-verse novel, she is able to make us feel the grit in our teeth, dust under our eyelids, and the desperate wish or rain. You can almost hear Billie Jo playing the piano in the background as she tells the story. Despite the hard times, the love and support of family can be seen throughout. This is a wonderful story to listen to and is performed beautifully by Ms. Masburn.

I would use this novel as a collaborative lesson on the dust bowl between a language arts class, Earth science class and a social studies class. The social studies class would first learn about the dust bowl in general, what happened, and how the government tried to help. After that, the Earth sciences class would learn about the ways farmers rotate crops in order to maintain soil and nutrient balance. Finally, the language arts class would read and/or listen to Out of the Dust. The book would be a look into the lives and feelings of the people during this time period and emphasis the concepts learned during the other two classes.

(I do not have an excerpt since I listened to this book on CD.)