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Summary: Great for a book report
Review: If you don't have much time left before that next book report is due and you need a really short book, Out of the Dust is for you. Set in the Great Depression out in the Oklahoma Panhandle, you follow Billie Jo, a young teenage girl who is trying to survive after her mother and baby brother died with no wheat on her father's farm growing because of the lack of rain. This book is written in free-hand poetry which makes it a lot shorter than it looks. I used this for my last book report and I got it read in less than an hour and a half. Don't read this though if you are just reading it for fun--there are many better books out there to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Out of the Dust
Review: Out of the Dust is a sad story. You get the feeling that you are in the book and you are Billie Jo, but you are not. It's like you can see everything that is happening. It is one of the best books I've ever read. You can only imagine how great it really is. But when Billie Jo's mother dies its sad. I loved this book and I think that everyone should read a great book like this.
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Summary: Out of the Dust Book Review
Review: The Newberry Medal winning book "Out of the Dust," by Karen Hesse is a novel written in the time of the Great Depression. Not only were times tough with money,but the book also is set in during Dust Bowl of Oklahoma. The main character, Billie Jo, struggles with several things throughout the novel, death of her mother and unborn baby brother, hardship with money, blaim, and sorrow. Billie Jo must live with the fact that her dad is to blaim for the accident that killed her mother and unborn brother. So from then on out her dad is too depressed to console or help her deal with everyday problems. Hesse does a great job using the poem and journal format to capture the reader's attention and it is a different style of writing that students can enjoy. I would recommend this novel to middle level readers looking to enjoy a book about struggles in life and an important time in U.S. history.
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Summary: Out of the Dust
Review: Out of the Dust- At first I was a little rocky on how I liked the book. It was confusing. Let me give you a little summary on what the book was about. Billy Jo, the main character, has a really weird relationship with her mother like most teens do today. The book takes place during the great depression. Billy Jo practically doesn't even speak a word to her father. Billy Jo is an only child but then her mother gets pregnant. While her mom was making coffee her father left a bucket of kerosene right by the stove and guess what happened? Hmm well I'm not going to tell you. Billy named the baby Franklin at that time president Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office. Billy Jo lives in Oklahoma. During the Great Depression in the early 1930s there was a lot of dust bowls occurring. Billy Jo would sometimes get caught in dust storms while she was walking home. The house would sometimes be filled with dust. Just imagine walking into your house with all this dust in it can we say "ew". Billy Jo plays piano, but ever since she threw that pale of kerosene out the door she hasn't been able to play. How sad :(. Billy Jo wants to run away and get out of the dust, but does she? Well, this book is ok. What a "drag". This book gets two stars.
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Summary: Out of the dust Review
Review: Billie Jo's life reflects the many tragedies of the Dust Bowl. A lot of people were depressed and saddened. She was also in the heart of the Dust Bowl, Oklahoma. The crops didn't grow and the economy was going down. The author introduced a new way of writing to me. I never read a book in journal format. It is beautifully written and I love the style. Hesse is a very graphic and intellectual woman. Yet the story was sad and depressing. As in many of the books I read, I felt the author left me hanging at the end of the book. I felt the plot was very vague and simple; it didn't have me glued to the book. Each entry had tone, mood, descriptions, and graphic words. The climax was a real page turner. Billie Jo's father left a pail of Kerosene near the stove. Does her mother survive? Billie Jo felt it was everything was her fault. After this event everything starts to change the dust storms get worse. Out of the Dust was a good book but not my taste. The one thing that kept Billie Jo happy was her piano her mother also played the piano. She would go to piano recitals but if it was on a school day her mother wouldn't let her go. This led me, the reader to believe that the mother was jealous of her piano playing. After the big climax she stopped playing the piano. Piano is vital to Billie Jo's character. I thought this was a beautiful book but it is not my favorite genre.
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Summary: Out of the Dust
Review: Billie Jo Kelby is an average 13 year old girl who was living through rough times during the Dust Bowl. The book was very pleasing to read. In a few parts of the book I couldn't wait to see what happened next. Then again, sometimes I felt like she was overstressing a little too much. When Billie Jo's mother died, it seemed as though she lost the biggest part of her. She had no real connection with her father, so, while her mother was gone she was left alone. I could comprehend the pain she was going through and wished that someone could have been there to comfort her. The greatly descriptive details made me comprehend the way her house was swarming with dust. This truly is an amazing book to read. If you read this book I am sure that you will get the message that Karen Hesse is trying to express. This book will teach you that you should love your family and have faith in the people that you love.
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Summary: My Critique
Review: Personally I think that Out of the Dust wasn't all that bad.
I disliked most of the book. However there were some interesting points. I feel that it was a very well written historical fiction novel. Although the book did not appeal to me as well as it did to some other students, it does have a creative ending. It was weird, in an exciting way. I believe that some entries in Out of the Dust would be a reliable primary source because it told us about the Dust Bowl in the early 1930's. There were many facts relating to the Dust Bowl. For example the crops had suffered greatly that year. Many farmers were losing much money. During this natural disaster, the dust was so thick that you were up to your knees in it. The analogies in the book were well thought out. For example, near the end of the book the father began to sing and Billy Jo stated that he sounded like a car engine short of gas. Speaking of flammables, the one event that kept you on the edge of your seat was the cause of Ma's death. It was horrible at that. Only I'm not going to tell it to you in case your in the middle of reading the book. The book all in all was in some ways mind boggling yet simultaneously heartbreaking.
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Summary: Out of the Dust
Review: Out of the Dust is a novel by Karen Hesse. The story revolves around the main character, Billy Jo Kelby. It tells of her life during the Great Depression. At the start of the book, Billy Jo is an only child who lives with her parents in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. This novel was written in the form of a journal and includes Billy Jo's many observations about the environment around her. She also mainly focuses on her piano playing. Billy Jo lives for the piano and it really is her main connection with her mother. However, there is more about this story than her observations. The book also revolves around an accident that later killed her mother and her newborn brother. To make things worse, her hands were terribly burned in the accident and she can no longer play piano. The story goes on to discuss her feelings about leaving the dust. This eventually leads to Billy Jo and her father finally communicating after months. The one thing that I loved about this novel was the use of figurative language. This mostly regarded her father. Billy Jo also used figurative language who speaking about her hands. Throughout the book, Billy Joe talked about her parents. She remembers her mother, and especially how her father acted around her. Billy Jo soon begins to realize that her father is searching for her mother, even in death. One quote struck my in particular. It took place at the end of the novel and spoke of Billy Joe's constant journey out of the dust. "And I know that all the time,
I was trying to get out of the dust.
The fact is,
What I am,
I am because of the dust.
And what I am,
Is good enough for me." I would definitely recommend this book. The author is insightful in her description of life during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. I felt, through the author's descriptive language, that I was actually living in this time period.
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Summary: Out of the dust
Review: The title is good, but the book isn't. It's really sad and depressing. It seemed as if things were constantly going downhill for Billie Jo. She gets no sympathy from her neighbors when her mother is killed (they believe it's her fault) and classmates who become jealous when she wins a contest and claims the judges were being nice to a cripple. A cripple, they call her. No sympathy from them at all. How would they feel if they were scarred for life and without a mother? They need to think before they say things. While a lot of the subject matter will make you sad or angry, none of the characters bring light into the story, except for Louise and Mad Dog, but that's about it. I bought it a few days ago and read it in two days. I was very upset when I finished the book because it was too sad and I expected a lot more from the book. The ending was by far the best part of the book. Nothing else. I gave it two stars because it gave a clear lesson on how the Dust Bowl affected the people of Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arkansas and Arizona. Don't expect this book to have joy or surprises. You won't find any of these.
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Summary: Out of The Dust Review
Review: In the process of reading "Out of the Dust" I was struck with a sense of wonder and interest. Karen Hesse brought me into the book as if I was listening to someone actually talk to me one on one about his or her life. At the beginning of the novel, it struck me as a book that I would really develop interest in. I felt like I got to know the characters, and I could feel the emotion the Billie Jo had. This novel was very deep. It had a certain volume to it that brought out the harshness and the terrible things that were going on, but at the same time it caressed the intensity of the situations. What I mean by this is, it could show the meaning of a conflict very descriptively while it was in a metaphorical form. I really liked the fact that it was written in a free verse poem format. I think that worked better with the emotion of the conflict rather than having it a standard paragraph form. This novel really touched me. It strengthened the knowledge of what I knew about the Dust Bowl, but it also helped me interact with it a little better. I felt that through the book, the way it was written, I could express my emotions more freely.
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