Title: Out of the Dust
Author: Karen Hesse
# Of Pages: 256
Publisher: Scholastic
Publication Date: January 1, 1997
Source: Library
Level: Young Adult
Rating: 5 Hearts
Synopsis
(From Goodreads)
When Billie Jo is
just fourteen she must endure heart-wrenching ordeals that no child should have
to face. The quiet strength she displays while dealing with unspeakable loss is
as surprising as it is inspiring.
Written in free
verse, this award-winning story is set in the heart of the Great Depression. It
chronicles Oklahoma's staggering dust storms, and the environmental--and
emotional--turmoil they leave in their path. An unforgettable tribute to hope
and inner strength.
My Verdict
I’ve never had any interest in reading this book. I remember
my sister reading it when we were kids but the cover was dull and old looking
and I didn’t think it could possibly hold anything in it that I would enjoy. In
more recent years, since my love of verse novels, many other verse lovers and
authors have talked about how much they love this book, still I hesitated.
I finally decided to look past the boring/ugly cover and
read it anyway. Now I can understand what all the fuss was about. Out of the
Dust is a well-written, honest look at a
young girl’s life during the Great Depression. Broken down by season, the story
unfolds over a two-year span and is told in first person narrative by
fourteen-year-old Billie Jo.
I picked up this book late one night expecting to read a few
pages before bed. Those few pages turned into the whole book. Although it is a
rather slow progressing plotline about a family of farmers’ day-to-day life,
somehow it kept me enraptured. I think a large part of this was the writing.
Hesse writes with an honest, bluntness that is raw, powerful, and emotional.
“But now,
sorrow climbs up our
front steps,
big as Texas, and we
didn’t even see it coming,
even though it’d been
making its way straight for us
all along.”
In conclusion, if there is still anyone out there who has
been putting off reading this book, don’t wait any longer, read it!
