Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

Book Genre: Poetry

Publishing Info: Scholastic Press (227 pages)

Awards: This book won a Newberry Medal

Summary: This book consists of free verse poetry that explains the life of Billie Jo, the main character. She is fourteen years old and the story spans a year and a half of her life. The setting is the Oklahoma prairie during the 1930's. The prairie is a dust bowl (hence the name "Out if the Dust" and is portrayed as a miserable place to live.) Her father is a farmer, and they are trying to survive off the land. The poetry is written and sequenced almost like a personal diary. Through family and personal tragedy, she looses her mother and newborn brother because of an accident that her and her father are responsible for. The accident left Billie Jo physically handicapped and her father emotionally handicapped. Afterwards, the two of them had to somehow mend their relationship and figure out how to get on with life.

Personal Rating: ***Good. It's a good story and the author really makes you feel the emotions of Billie Joe but it's so depressing that it's hard to read. In 227 pages, not a single good thing happens to this child!

Reading Level: 5.3
Interest Level: 5-6

Possible uses in reading and writing across the curriculum: Of course, this would be a good book to include in a literature focus unit on poetry because it's a good example of free verse poetry. It would be easy to integrate this literature into fifth grade science because many of those learning objective could correspond with underlying themes of this novel. For example, climate on the prairie was very harsh, they would go through severe droughts and plants and livestock would die. Then rain would pour and the environment would flood. Fifth grade science teachers have to teach about the water cycle, landforms, eco-systems, and ecology. Even fifth grade social studies learning objectives focus on US history the Great Depression and many of the problems faced by this community were related to that era.

Potential Problems or difficulties: I believe that girls would enjoy this book much more so than boys. The reasons are because that it is written from a woman's perspective and it contains a lot of emotional writings that many boys just don't understand.