Of Mice and Men: Dust Bowl

Illus. with photographs from the Dust Bowl era. This true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field. "The story is inspiring, and Stanley has recorded the details with passion and dignity. An excellent curriculum item."--(starred) Booklist.   

This title examines an important historic event, the Dust Bowl. Readers will learn the history of the United States leading up to the Dust Bowl, key players and happenings in the Dust Bowl, and the event's effect on society. Color photos, detailed maps, and informative sidebars accompany easy-to-read, compelling text. Features include a timeline, facts, additional resources, web sites, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index. Essential Events is a series in Essential Library, an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company. Grades 6-9.

A speck of dust is a tiny thing. In fact, five of them could fit into the period at the end of this sentence. On a clear, warm Sunday, April 14, 1935, a wild wind whipped up millions upon millions of these specks of dust to form a duster--a savage storm--on America's high southern plains. The sky turned black, sand-filled winds scoured the paint off houses and cars, trains derailed, and electricity coursed through the air. Sand and dirt fell like snow--people got lost in the gloom and suffocated . . . and that was just the beginning. Don Brown brings the Dirty Thirties to life with kinetic, highly saturated, and lively artwork in this graphic novel of one of America's most catastrophic natural events: the Dust Bowl.

In the 1930s farmers in the South struggled to survive one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. The story of the dust bowl is one of desperation and shattered lives, but also emphasizes the courage and determination that characterizes the American spirit.

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist and author Timothy Egan follows a half-dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, going from sod homes to new framed houses to huddling in basements with the windows sealed by damp sheets in a futile effort to keep the dust out. He follows their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black blizzards, crop failure, and the deaths of loved ones. Drawing on the voices of those who stayed and survived--those who, now in their eighties and nineties, will soon carry their memories to the grave--Egan tells a story of endurance and heroism against the backdrop of the Great Depression.

Before global warming, there was dust. In the 1930s, dangerous black storms swept through the Great Plains. Created by drought and reckless farming, these lethal storms were part of an environmental, economic, and human catastrophe that changed the course of American history. In riveting, accessible prose, an acclaimed historian explains the causes behind the disaster and explores the Dust Bowl's impact, from a rich cultural legacy to the visionary conservation that would finally offer hope to the Plains.