home

//"Dust piles up like snow across the prairie..."//
 * [[image:out_of_the_dust.jpg width="236" height="339" align="left"]]__Out of the Dust__ By: Karen Hesse**

A young red hairded girl by the name of Billie Jo is growning up in the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma. Billie Jo loves to play piano, untill a horrible accident happens and she looses her mother and new baby brother and her hands are scared and hurt so badly she can't play piano anymore. Her father left a bucket of kerosine next to the stove and it caught on fire. Her mother then ran outside to get the father and Billie Jo was going to follower her out until she realized that if they left the bucket in there the whole house would burn down, so Billie Jo grabbed the bucket and went to throw it out of the house but she didnt see her mother returning to the house and her mothers whole body got burned so baldy she couldnt open her eyes or move, and she was pregnant with Billie Jo's baby brother. The bucket also badly burned Billie Jo's hands and she was unable to play the piano for a good year. Her mother later died giving birth to the baby and an hour later after she died, the baby dies aswell. The father and Billie Jo buried them together. With the death of her mother and baby brother came a break in Billie Jo's father and hers relationship. Both of them became very depressed because the house was so empty and because of the dust, the father was unable to grow any crops. Everyone is having a hard time because hardly any crops will live, and all the cattle and livestock are so skinny you can see all of their ribs becuase the farmers cant afford to feed them. The only time people become happy is when it rains. Later Bilie Jo cant stand to stay in the Dust Bowl any longer so she runs away to Arizona. While she is running away she meets a man in a box car who ran away from this wife and kid. When Billie Jo feel asleep, he stole her food and left her his picture of his family. As she think about her mother and father on the box car she realizes that running away isnt helping anything and it is no different than it is back home, so when she gets to Arizona, she calls her father and goes back home. Her and her fathers relationship became much better after then and her father meet a new women. The wheat is starting to grow now, her father is happy, she can now play the paino with little pain, and most of all their hope returns to them.

Karen Hesse was born August 29, 1952 in Baltimore Maryland. After college she started wiritting poems publishing books, then writting books. She is an American Writter of Young Adult books that are often have historical settings. Her book __Out of the Dust__, won many awards the Newbery Medal, and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction.

Karen Hesse also wrote __The Music of Dolphins__, __Letters of Rifka,__ __Witness__, __Brooklyn Bridge__, __Stowaway__, __Come On, Rain__!, __Wish on a Unicorn__, __Phoenix Rising__, __A Time of Angles__, __Spuds__, __The Young Hans Christian Andersen__, __Aleutain Sparrow__**,** __The Cats in Krasinski Square__, __Lavender__, __Just Juice, Poppy's Chair,__ __The Stone Lamp: Eight Stories of Hanukka Through History__, and __Sable__.

Coments on book:** This book did a very good job at discribing how hard life was living in the dust bowl. It described how easily hope is lost, people die, and how everything can fall apart. This book is more of a younger kids book but it is still a good book to read and the awards it won show that.
 * Costumer Review:[[image:http://reviews.borders.com/5396a/51115513/ratings.gif width="75" height="14"]]