Scholastic Out of the Dust ( Gold)

The author's use of language is so tender and evocative! I was in tears all throughout reading this. So well written, almost a masterpiece in fact. The Newbery medal was more than deserved!

１４歳の少女ビリー･ジョーの日記のような詩、詩のような小説。 毎日のように吹きつける砂嵐の中で、農作物は枯れ、友人は去り、 家もトラックも大切なピアノも、簡単に砂まみれになってしまう。 亡くなった母親の亡霊、悲しみと皮膚癌に蝕まれた無口な父親、そして 砂の中から逃げ出したくて、ビリーは西へ向かう列車に飛び乗った･･･ 詩なのでページ数の割に文字数は少ないです。 難易度は１２００～１７００語、ペンギンブックスで言うと レベル２～３程度だと思います。

This award winning book, published in 1999, tells a fascinating story in an amazing way. When my friend Margie called and said I am bringing you a book you absolutely must read, and told me the title, I said, "Isn't that a Scholastic book for students?" "Yes," she replied "and you are going to love it." She was right. I read the book through in a couple of hours that night, then went back and read it again, slowly. The book is written in free verse, which is so appropriate as 14-year-old Billie Jo talks about the free-floating sand and dust on her family's dirt-scratching Oklahoma wheat farm during the 1930s dust bowl. The youngster stoically copes with one loss after another and finds no one to confide in. Billie Jo's mother is absorbed in her long-desired pregnancy, and Billie Jo's silent father seems to think only of the soil, growing plants and digging a hole to retain water. The piano in the living room of their tiny house becomes a focal point, demonstrating that some beauty was able to peek through those dismal dust-filled days. Billie Jo learns to play the musical instrument from her talented mother, and makes a name for herself at school. The three are looking forward to the baby's arrival, when another disaster strikes. While many of their neighbors begin heading west as the fierce dust storms force them out, Billie Jo's father says they have lived through hard times before and they are staying put no matter what. Her mother accidentally splashes a pail of kerosene while making tea and runs screaming out the door from the resulting flames. Billie Jo grabs the pail and throws it out the door --- just as her mother rushes back inside. Altho Billie Jo tries to beat out the flames with her hands, it is a futile effort. Her mother is fatally wounded and a few days later the long awaited baby is stillborn, adding to Billie Jo's grief. Also Billie Jo's hands are so burned and scarred she can no longer play the piano. Billie Jo is so overcome with guilt, shame, and grief she finally runs away only to discover how much she needs her father and the farm. The book ends on a happy note with her father able to tell her that he loves her, a friendly neighbor begins bringing them food and makes her father smile again. ----------------------------- The big surprise for me was learning the author was not writing her own biography, because she made it so believable. Karen Hesse lived in Baltimore and only drove through the Great Plains area. Then she began researching the dust bowl years and many of the stories in this book are taken directly from newspaper items of the day. I have recommended this book to everyone I know.

Out of the Dust tells the story of fourteen-year-old girl Billie Jo, who must learn to navigate life in the midst of the 1930’s Dust Bowl which has taken a toll on her small town in Oklahoma. Billie Jo lives with her father and pregnant mother. Billie Jo’s family is the picture of perseverance, surviving through relentless dust storms, failing farms, and crippling poverty, refusing to give up and head west as many families around them are doing. Billie Jo’s love and talent for playing the piano carries her through the darkest of times, until a tragic accident involving herself and her mother disables her from playing. Navigating a now strained relationship with her father without the piano to comfort her, Billie Jo struggles to find her place in a life that seems too hard to manage. When home seems like the darkest and most hopeless place to be, Billie Jo sets out in search of another life, but to her own surprise she finds that maybe home is where she was always meant to be. Written as a series of poems from Billie Jo’s perspective, author Karen Hesse intimately connects readers to the hardships of life living in the Dust Bowl and makes us yearn for rain and new beginnings just as Billie Jo does. Hesse’s use of verse drives this novel with descriptive details and real emotion, successfully investing readers in the book’s themes of hardship and perseverance. Hesse’s book serves as a historical lesson about the reality of life for a group of Americans living during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, and provides readers with a real lesson that running away from problems is never the way to fix them.

Brilliant