From School Library Journal
Grade 4-8-Grace, 12, details the hardships she endures with her family and neighbors. She describes how they must scrub their house constantly, knead bread in a drawer, and breathe through damp handkerchiefs during a "duster." Even graver dangers abound: dust pneumonia, plagues of jackrabbits, and the loss of livelihood for farmers. Most compelling are the tiny joys that make life bearable: a baby jackrabbit, a dress lovingly created from a floral flour sack. An epilogue that provides a lively summary of the rest of their lives has more plot than most of this episodic novel. The winner of an Arrow Book Club/Dear America Student Writing Contest, the 15-year-old author interviewed several people who lived through the Dust Bowl. One small error appears in the notes: The Dust Bowl caused one of the United States's largest migrations, but at one million people, it is not the largest. As an example of what a teen can achieve when she explores her neighborhood and nations past, Survival succeeds. Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust (Scholastic, 1997) provides a more poetic view of this period. Combine those two books with Milton Meltzer's Driven from the Land (Benchmark, 2000), Jerry Stanley's Children of the Dust Bowl (Crown, 1992), Elizabeth Partridge's Restless Spirit (Viking, 1998), and William Durbin's The Journal of C. J. Jackson: A Dust Bowl Migrant (Scholastic, 2002) for a unit about one of the country's worst ecological disasters.
Tina Zubak, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, PACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Gr. 4-8. In a strong Dear America series book, Grace Edwards uses her journal to tell the story of a year (1935) in the Texas Panhandle town of Dalhart during the days of the Dust Bowl. Centered on a 12-year-old's perspective of home and school, chores and friends, Grace's diary reveals in graphic detail what life was like when farms failed, families went hungry, and children died from dust pneumonia because no rain fell. Old photographs and advertisements, part of the Historical Notes section, add further detail to a rather depressing, but fictionalized, authentically flavored account of a significant portion of American history, which is made more remarkable by the fact that Janke was only 15 years old when the novel was published. The story grew from a selection she wrote for the 1998 Arrow Book Club/Dear America Student Writing Contest.
Frances BradburnCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
