Karen Hesse

Out Of The Dust

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

Out of the Dust

Laura Mauler

I expected this to be a general look at life in a specific time and place (Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s) in the same vein as "All of a Kind Family", which detailed Jewish life in the Lower East Side during the early 1900s. That is to say, a book of nice characters and small events rather than one story arc that builds, climaxes, and resolves.

That is not this book.

This book tells the story of two years in the life of Billy Jo, written as diary entries and reading like poems. A bit into the book there's an unexpected turn of events that quickly builds the story of this book, hooking me and leaving me breathless through to the last pages. I highly, highly recommend this book.

Tracie McMurray

Can easliy be read in one day. Beautiful snapshot of the time period. 7th graders love this!

Trever

I don't remember much about this other than that I read most of it while I was out of school for a few days and thought it was bleak and not very interesting.

Jeni Enjaian

A review from my old blog...

Wow... what a book. I knew nothing about this book before I picked it up and started reading. I'm not usually a big fan of poetry but the free verse Hesse utilized tore at my heart. I felt so much for the young girl's heart ache, her terrible pain, the daily heartache she had to endure with the weather, with the loss of her mother.

I can't imagine a more powerful book. I want to add this book to my personal library as soon as I can. I am so in love with this book... so much so that I can't put together a coherent review.

Out Of The Dust

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