The Great American Dust Bowl - a review

Brown, Don. 2013. The Great American Dust Bowl. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

In a slim (80-page), hardcover, graphic novel, Don Brown offers a compelling account of the causes, effects, and consequences of America's 19th century push into the Great Plains - first for ranching, then small farming enterprises, and finally, large-scale, motorized farming.  Years of drought combined with loss of prairie grassland that had sustained the American Indians and the wild buffalo herds, led to dust storms of epic proportions that lasted for a decade. Describing one storm, Brown writes,

On May 3, 1934, whirlwinds lifted 350 million tons of dirt from the Montana and the Dakotas' prairie, gathered them into gritty clouds that reached fifteen thousand feet, a height equal to twelve stacked Empire State Buildings. 

Enough dust to fill 1,500 modern supertankers blew East.

Dust fell like snow over Chicago.

Atlanta.

Boston.

Washington.

Midday Manhattan darkened beneath a dusty gray haze. Cars switched on their headlights to see. The Statue of Liberty seemed to disappear. Everywhere, dust: streets, sidewalks, grass, even the water in New York Harbor.

Panels of varying sizes, including double-spread pages, are presented primarily in sepia tones, denoting both the time period and the ever-present dirt.  Facts are presented in text boxes or within panels, in easy-reading Tim Sale Brush font, and dialogue (documented in the Source Notes and Selected Bibliography) appears in word bubbles.  Illustrations are pen and ink with "digital paint.  The hard-luck farmers are simply sketched, but convey seriousness and gravity.  Smiles can only be found on the "rainmaker," a snake oil salesman who profited from the sale of useless items that promised to bring rain, and on the faces of a small family who rejoices outside as rain finally arrives to break the drought.

When the rain came, it meant life itself. It meant a future.

The Great American Dust Bowl may be read quickly, but will not soon leave your mind. My library has cataloged this one as a young adult title, but it's certainly suitable for middle grades as well.  I highly recommend it.

• Title: Dust bowl farmer raising fence to keep it from being buried under drifting sand. Cimarron County, Oklahoma
• Creator(s): Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-1985, photographer
• Date Created/Published: 1936 Apr.
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions. For information, see U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Black & White Photographs(http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/res/071_fsab.html)
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, DC 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

• Title: Liberal (vicinity), Kan. Soil blown by dust bowl winds piled up in large drifts on a farm
• Creator(s): Rothstein, Arthur, 1915-1985, photographer
• Date Created/Published: 1936 March.
• Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.
• Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Other reviews @

• The New York Times (by NYPL's Betsy Bird)
• The Nonfiction Detectives

Other outstanding books featuring the Dust Bowl Era:

• Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse - 1998 winner of the Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction
• The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan - 2010 winner of the Scott O'Dell Award and also a graphic novel
• Years of Dust by Albert Marrin

Other Don Brown books reviewed by Shelf-employed:

• America is Under Attack: September 11, 2001: The Day the Towers Fell
• All Stations! Distress!: April 12, 1915: The Day the Titanic Sank (reviewed on LibraryThing)
• Let it Begin Here!: April 19, 1775: The Day the American Revolution Began (reviewed on LibraryThing)

Looking for more reviews of nonfiction books? 

Today's Nonfiction Monday roundup is at Wrapped in Foil.

Years of Dust

Marrin, Albert. 2009. Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl. New York: Dutton.

On May 9, 1934, winds kicked up a dust storm that scientists estimate carried away 350 million tons of topsoil.  Although it began in the plains of Montana and Wyoming, in the next two days,

 "Some 12 million tons of dust enveloped Chicago in a gritty haze - four pounds for every man, woman, and child in the Windy City.  On May 12, the New York Times reported, 'a cloud of dust thousands of feet high...filtered the rays of the sun for five hours yesterday. New York was obscured in a half-light similar to the light cast by the sun in a partial eclipse.' Three hundred miles out at sea, sailors wrote their names in the dust that settled on ships' decks."

But this was not the biggest storm, nor the only storm.  The Dust Bowl years lasted a decade and spanned the plains in a wide swath from Montana and North Dakota to Texas.

Albert Marrin tells the story from a wide range of viewpoints -  geological, historical, economical, political, artistic, environmental, social, literary and individual.  The era that was the Dust Bowl touched every aspect of our civilization and every component of our natural habitat.  Marrin employs the voices of newspapers, individuals, poets, and writers of the time, including the great John Steinbeck to convey the harsh realities of the day.  He uses images of newspapers, handbills, and period artwork as well as photographs, including those of the famous Dorothea Lange.

Words to Know, Notes, Books for Kids, Bibliography and Index complete this intense and exhaustive study of one our country's worst social and environmental catastrophes.

Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl is a cautionary tale of the consequences of our own actions.  A powerful book.

Click for links to all of today's Non-Fiction Monday reviews.

Out of the Dust

Listening Library’s, Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse, read by Marika Mashburn

Obviously, this was a great book – winner of the 1998 Newbery Medal and the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction. It tells of the heart-wrenching Dust Bowl years in the life of Billy Jo, a 14-year-old girl from the Oklahoma panhandle.

The audio version, however, has a slight handicap to overcome. Because this is a free verse novel written in a journal format, there is no dialogue to break the monotony of single voice narration. Marika Mashburn does an excellent job in evoking Billy Jo’s emotions; the reader can hear both the smiles and the tears in her voice. Additionally, her voice sounds youthful and believable as the young Billy Jo; however, the reading sometimes feels rushed. Overall, I think that this title is best read rather than heard. YALSA’s Audiobook and Experimental Media Committee selected Out of the Dust for their “annual list of spoken word recordings with high aesthetic and content appeal for listeners ages 12 through 18.”