The Dust Bowl Years
RSSDaryl Grabarek, Curriculum Connections -- School Library Journal, 11/03/2009
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Imagine a wall of black dust 1000 miles wide and hundreds of feet high, advancing more than 1500 miles. That was the size and distance traveled by the “Black Sunday” blizzard of 1935—the largest of the dust storms that plagued our country during 1930s. This year several new books on the Dust Bowl were published for middle grade readers, each offering a different approach to an era marked by drought, devastating storms, and the Depression.
In Albert Marrin’s thorough and detailed Years of Dust (Dutton, 2009; Gr 5-10) the author explores the ecological, economic, social, and technological changes that coincided to create the conditions that fostered the “apocalyptic storms” of the era. He begins his history of the ecological disaster and its impact with an account of the massacre of hundreds of thousands of American bison that roamed the plains.
The absence of the buffalo made way for expanding populations of animals (including prairie dogs and cattle) that uprooted the prairie grasses. New, labor-saving plows also cut through the roots of these grasses that had stabilized the environment. These events, followed by years of drought, and the relentless winds that gave rise to storm after storm (in one year alone there were 38 categorized as “major”), contributed to the erosion of the land. The Great Depression brought foreclosures and abandoned farms.
Throughout the book, Marrin includes moving first-person accounts of the era and striking sepia images of the farms, the unremitting storms, the extreme poverty, and life on the road and in the camps that awaited the Dust Bowl refugees. The book concludes with information on the end of the drought and a map and discussion on deforestation today.
The effect that Dust Bowl conditions had on the lives of the people who experienced them is poignantly expressed in the photographs of Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, and the other photographers who documented the era. It was their images that caught the attention of people around the country, and government officials in Washington, D. C., alerting them to what was happening west of the Mississippi.
Martin W. Sandler‘s The Dust Bowl through the Lens (Walker, 2009; Gr 5-9) covers the erosion of the American plains, focusing on the what happened to the families impacted by the dust storms. Sepia photos depict what these people left behind, how they traveled, and what was waiting for them when they reached their destinations. Final chapters announce the return of the rain in 1939, and conservation efforts, including the work of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps, which planted three billion trees creating wind barriers throughout the Midwest.
Matt Phelan’s The Storm in the Barn (Candlewick, 2009; Gr 5-7) takes a graphic, fictional approach to period. Cartoon illustrations and a minimal text depict a family demoralized by the dust blizzards: a dour-faced father; an anxious mother; a frightened, 11-year-old boy and his two sisters, including one confined to bed, ill from “dust disease.” On the eve of their departure from Kansas, the boy encounters a dripping, sinister figure in a neighbor's abandoned barn. Phelan’s story and his images in predominantly gray and brown tones, dramatically capture the desperation and fear wrought by years of deprivation, and a child's heroic attempt to change the course of the disaster.
Used together, these excellent titles offer readers a range of materials on the period filled with iconic and memorable photographs and visuals. Teachers seeking reading choices for differentiated classrooms will want to own all three titles.
