Literature Guide: Out of the Dust (Grades 4-8)

Rating:
Summary: This is a very suspenseful book!
Review: As Billie Jo is growing up there are many dust storms in Oklahoma. She has a major problem that is too hard to face. After many years she learns to get over the problem, and she lived with her dad in Oklahoma and is very happy. I recommend it highly!

Rating:
Summary: A great book for kids and adults!!!
Review: I was thrilled about reading the book.I want to read all her books now.I would reccomend this book to anyone

Rating:
Summary: Out of the Dust: a great book!
Review: Out of the Dust is a heart touching story about a girl living in the Dust Bowl, in the middle of the Great Depression. Billie Joe, Karen Hesse's main character, has had a hard life. Her mother dies and her father doesn't pay any attention to her anymore. Everyone blames Billie Joe for the death of her mother and her baby. But she knows that her father also took part in it too. Through out this great book the author put many true facts into it like the Dionne Quintulets. This makes it even more interesting. I really suggest that you should read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Very well written and descriptive. An excellent story
Review: It was an excellent book about a girl (Billy Jo) living in Kansas. Her father is a wheat farmer and she is very poor. Something happens that changes everthing and suddely Billy Jo can't play piano anymore. Billy Jo's mother is an excellent piano player and owns an old piano recieved from her husband for a special occasion. Then, something even more horrible than the first happens to 2 people she is very close to. Her father is never the same and never will be. This book deseves the Newbery Medal!

Rating:
Summary: Superb!!!!!!!!
Review: This is a great book. It is very interesting. Karen Hesse had a great point of view and turned it into an incredible story. I loved it. It tells about the different people Billie Jo meets and what happens to her. This is a great book, that you just can't put down. Detail after detail. O my gosh it is just very good and that's all I can say. So read it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A heart-warming book of a young girl
Review: Out of the Dust was a terrific book about a 14 year old girl named Billie Jo. It took place during the Great Depression in 1934 through 1935. She lived in the panhandle of Oklahoma. Her family kept trying to raise wheat, but there was no rain to help it grow. Read this book to find out what happens.

Rating:
Summary: "Out of the Dust": An Elegant Story of Life and Love
Review: "Out of the Dust" is a beautifully crafted and finely written book about Billie Jo,a young girl, growing up in Oklahoma in the 1940's, the heart of the Dustbowl. Although her father daily prays for rain, his prayers bring only dust and despair. Added to that despair is the untimely death of both Billie Jo's mother and brother through a tragic accident she believes she caused. She begins to lose hope, hope in herself and in her father, who has found another woman. Eventually, Billie Jo learns that her mother can never be replaced, and that a part of her mother is always deep inside of her. An exquisite, heart-breaking book. Not one to miss!

Rating:
Summary: Excellant Book....heart warming!
Review: Out of the Dust is a book told from the point of view of a young girl living through the Oklahoma dust bowl. The book is written in free verse form and it touches your heart. My 4th graders are reading it and they can't get enough. It is easy to read and the writing style helps to create unbelievable mind pictures. I recommend this book to ANYONE!!!

Rating:
Summary: An excellent, powerful story with superb description!
Review: I found the novel, Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, very interesting and unique. Never before have I read and entire fictitious story, based upon a young girl's life, written in free verse poems. Out of the Dust is well written and its superb description invites the reader to make themselves comfortable (or rather uncomfortable) in the setting itself, the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Out of the Dust's main character is Billie Jo Kelby. Billie Jo is forced to overcome many unbelievable obstacles living in the harsh, bleak landscape of Oklahoma, during the Dust Bowl. After her mother's life is taken in a terrible accident, Billie is shoved into an irreplaceable position, she is forced to take on the routines and jobs of her deceased mother. Out of the Dust describes how Billie Jo copes with the daily events of her life and how she attempts to better herself. Eventually she accepts that she is her own special person, and that this dust covered place that everyone calls home is where she does and will forever belong. My favorite passage of this fantastic novel is as follows: "She wears a comical hat, with flowers, in December, and when she smiles, her face is full enough of springtime, it makes her hat seem just right. She brings apples in a sack, perfect apples she arranges in a bowl on the shelf, opposite the book of poetry. Sometimes, while I'm at the piano, I catch her reflection in the mirror, standing in the kitchen, soft-eyed, while Daddy finishes chores, and I stretch my fingers over the keys, and I play." I really like this poem in particular because of how Billie Jo is capable of accepting Louise as her new mother and also how Louise respects Billie's unconditional love for her true mother. Yet she still cares for Billie and she does simple, special actions, that Billie Jo misses, like arranging the perfect apples in the bowl on the shelf. Last, I admire how Billie Jo Kelby is able to overcome an emotional and frightening obstacle, to once again stroke the ivory, dust covered keys of her mother's piano. I give this story five stars. Out of the Dust is well written, has fantastic description, and is a roller coaster fo events. I recommend this book to anyone who loves Karen Hesse's rip-roaring story lines. Out of the Dust is easy to read and has a quick pace, like the whirlwinds of dust and tumbleweeds described in the story. It's intense and contains many valuable morals for life. Read this story and you won't regret it...I know I don't!

Rating:
Summary: I am so glad I read this book! It is really moving.
Review: Billie Jo lives in an environment that most of us could never fathom. She is living in Oklahoma during the depression and is dealing day by day with that life. Her life is filled with dust, literally and figuritively. Removing all the sod which holds the needed moisture has brought about this great dust bowl. Billie Jo's mom is expecting a new baby, who will be 14 years younger than Billie Jo. Everyone seems excited, even Dad who is the strong silent type. Billie Jo has the gift of being able to play the piano, a talent she inherited from her mother. Unfortunately, Billie loses her mother in a tragic accident, an accident she blames her father for. In that accident, Billie Jo was maimed and feels her life is shot. Her one salvation from the never-ending dust had been the piano. Now it hurts to play. She wants to get out of the dust. Billie Jo discovers that what lies out of the dust is not for her..."the dust is in her". She returns home and reestablishes a relationship with her father. Soon he has a new women in his life, who Billie Jo resents initially, but accepts very well, eventually. This book written in free verse was very easy to read. The reader gets caught up in the lives of those in the dust. The dust is incomprehensible. I believe I would not have the stamina to endure life in the dust. Billie Jo had hard issues to deal with in her young life and handled them very realisitically for a teen. It was heartening to see a bond form between father and daughter out of the tragedy. Very, very realistic.