Poetry Review #3

1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hesse, Karen. 1998. OUT OF THE DUST. Read by Marika Mashburn. Old Greenwich, CT: Listening Library. ISBN 0807280127

2. PLOT SUMMARY
OUT OF THE DUST is an audio book about the life of Billie Jo. She is a 14-year-old girl living on a farm in Okalahoma during the dust storms of the Great Depression.

3. CRITICAL ANALYSIS
OUT OF THE DUST is a free verse novel by Karen Hesse. It is a form of narrative poetry, told through the voice of a 14-year-old girl during the Great Depression. This book is the winner of the 1998 Newbery Medal and the 1998 Scott O’Dell Award. Recommended for children ages 10 and up, Hesse tells of a girl’s trials and perseverance. She powerfully captures Billie Jo’s experience through a first person point of view. The book is made up of journal-like entries, or poems, from Billie Jo.

The book starts out with Billie Jo telling the listener about her birth and then fast-forwards 14 years to when she finds out her ma is going to have another baby. The entries are divided by seasons and months, beginning with Winter, January 1934. The listener learners of the relationship Billie Jo has with each of her parents, and how her relationship changes with her father after her mother dies: “Ma wouldn’t have let me go at all. Father just stood in the doorway and watched me leave.” We also hear of how her life changes after her hands are burned in a fire: “Nobody says anything about ‘those hands’ no more.” Finally, this is a story of Billie Jo’s journey, of leaving and then finding her way back home: “And I know now, that all the time that 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, even for me.”

Her love of music is what gets Billie Jo through hard times: “My place in the world is at the piano.” The listener feels her pain as she describes her hands, which are burned in a kerosene fire: “…lumps of flesh, swinging at my side.” Billie Jo eventually goes back to the music. The music is personified in the phrase “I’m getting to know the music again, and it’s getting to know me.”

Hesse uses strong figurative language in her writing. The powerful words conjecture up vivid imagines for the listener. For example, when Billie Jo describes her father’s voice when singing, the listener can hear his voice “start and stop like a car short of gas, like an engine choked with dust.” Hesse also uses many more metaphors in her writing. For example, she describes the rain as “Steady as a good friend who walks beside you, not getting in your way, staying with you in a hard time.” The words of Billie Jo are simple, yet expressive, with a southern dialectic. They are musical in the way they fall from the reader’s lips: “Wet. Clinging to the earth. Melting into the dirt. Snow.” or “Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything.”

Hesse uses sense imagery so the listener can practically see, smell, touch, and taste the dust. The phrase “…with dust” is repeated repeatedly for emphases. Hesse vividly describes how the dust is everywhere, in everything. At one point in the story, when Billie Jo realizes she cannot play the piano because her hands would not work, she did not cry. She says, “I think we’re both turning to dust.” The title of the book comes from a moving line when Billie Jo is talking about her father getting cancer and wanting to die. She said, “I didn’t want to go on. I just wanted to go. Away. Out of the dust.”

We hear Billie Jo’s strength when she said, “our future is drying up and blowing away with the dust” but she did not cry. We hear of her perseverance when she plays the piano after the fire: “I make my hands work, in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars, I make my hands play piano.” She wants to prove she can still make music: “I have a hunger for more tan food...”

This is in audio book format. It was more powerful hearing the words of Billie Jo, than just reading the words because free verse is meant to be heard. It flows with the rhythm of speech. Marika Mashburn does a wonderful job of bringing Billie Joe to life, with her expressive reading. Her voice is strong, clear, and easy to understand. The story is set in Okalahoma, and Mashburn is originally from Oklahoma, so the listener gets an authentic feel for what Billie Jo’s voice would sound like. Mashburn, who has had theatre training, effectively expresses the emotion of the book, sounding sad and lonely at times, and laughing when happy. The complete and unabridged version has two cassettes and lasts 2 hours and 9 minutes. The tapes were free of static and noise.

4. REVIEW EXCERPT(S)
School Library Journal
"Grade 5 Up. After facing loss after loss during the Oklahoma Dust Bowl, Billie Jo begins to reconstruct her life. A triumphant story, eloquently told through prose-poetry.”

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“This intimate novel, written in stanza form, poetically conveys the heat, dust and wind of Oklahoma. With each meticulously arranged entry Hesse paints a vivid picture of her heroine's emotions.”

Kirkus Reviews
“Told in free-verse poetry of dated entries that span the winter of 1934 to the winter of 1935, this is an unremittingly bleak portrait of one corner of Depression-era life. In Billie Jo, the only character who comes to life, Hesse (The Music of Dolphins, 1996, etc.) presents a hale and determined heroine who confronts unrelenting misery and begins to transcend it. The poem/novel ends with only a trace of hope; there are no pat endings, but a glimpse of beauty wrought from brutal reality.”

5. CONNECTIONS
*Many of Karen Hesse’s books deal with different issues and periods in American history. OUT OF THE DUST would be a good book to share with older elementary aged children when studying the Great Depression in American History. Other books that could be used include:
-A LIGHT IN THE STORM: THE CIVIL WAR DIARY OF AMELIA MARTIN
-WITNESS (Ku Klux Klan and racial issues)
-LETTERS FROM RIFKA (immigration experience)
*Activities with this book:
There are many literature and classroom guides available for OUT OF THE DUST. I have listed a few of my favorites:
-Clark, Sarah Kartchner. 1999. A GUIDE FOR USING OUT OF THE DUST IN THE CLASSROOM. Teacher Created Resources. ISBN: 157690623X
-Hesse, Karen, and Linda Beech. LITERATURE GUIDE: OUT OF THE DUST (GRADES 4-8). Scholastic. ISBN: 043913112X
-Mccarthy, Tara. 2003. OUT OF THE DUST (LITERATURE CIRCLE GUIDES, GRADES 4-8). Teaching Resources. ISBN: 0439355435

Sorry this one was a bit long. I just had so many quotes that I wanted to share.

Happy Reading!
Lonnie