Annotated Bibliography
Companion to the Community Read “Grapes of Wrath”
Blue Willow
Gates, Doris
Viking Press,1940.
Janey’s family has had to leave northern Texas and move around in search of work after their farm is foreclosed on during the Dust Bowl Depression. Their search leads them to California to a migrant camp where her father can find work. This is the story of Janey’s life in the migrant camp and her friendship with a Mexican girl named Lupe.
Ages 9-12
Children of the Dust Bowl: the true story of the school at the Weedpatch Camp
Stanley, Jerry
Crown Publishers, Inc., 1992.
From School Library Journal
“Stanley has crafted a well-researched, highly readable portrait of the ``Okies'' driven to California by the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s and the formidable hardships they faced. After first detailing the desperation of their lives in the Midwest, he follows them on their trek across the western United States to the promise of work in California, where their hopes were dashed. After providing this thorough, sympathetic context of their plight, he zeroes in on the residents of Weedpatch Camp, one of several farm-labor camps built by the federal government. The book is lavishly illustrated with period black-and-white photographs.” Joyce Adams Burner, formerly at Spring Hill Middle School, KS
Grade 6 and Up
Children of the Great Depression
Freedman, Russell
Clarion Books, 2005
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 4-8–Few authors are as well suited as Freedman to present a clear and understandable outline of this period. His prose is straightforward and easily comprehensible, making sense of even the complexities of the stock-market crash. The use of primary sources is outstanding. This is a book told by chorus, featuring the voices of those who endured the Depression, and is embellished with black-and-white photos by such luminaries as Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, and Russell Lee. Eight chapters cover the causes of the Great Depression, schooling, work life, migrant work, the lives of children who rode the rails, entertainment, and the economic resurgence of the early '40s. A wonderful, informed, and sympathetic overview that perfectly complements Jerry Stanley's Children of the Dust Bowl. Ann Welton, Grant Elementary School, Tacoma,WA
(Ages 9 – 12)
Dear Mrs Roosevelt: Letters from Children of the Great Depression
Cohen, Robert
University of North Carolina Press, 2006
From Booklist
From the voluminous correspondence addressed to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Cohen has culled nearly 200 letters penned by children. Poignant, heartfelt, and brimming with childlike faith, these missives represent a portion of the population often overlooked by historians eager to capture the heart and soul of Depression America. Viewed as a champion of the poor, the oppressed, and the helpless, Eleanor Roosevelt was beloved by legions of poverty-stricken children and teenagers, who reached out to her in record-setting numbers. Nearly every letter contains a plea for economic or material assistance, reflecting the physical and psychological burdens and fears visited upon the vast majority of American youth during their formative years in the 1930s. Perhaps even more bittersweet than the letters themselves, is the fact that Eleanor Roosevelt was unable to personally answer or address the individual problems described in such vivid and heartbreaking detail. Margaret Flanagan
Dust for Dinner (An I Can Read Book)
Turner, Ann
HarperCollins Publishers, 1995
From School Library Journal
“Jake and Maggy and their parents live on a farm in Oklahoma where they grow crops, raise animals, and sing and dance to the music on the radio. But when a drought comes and dust storms destroy the land, the family must auction all of their belongings and head to California. Jake's first-person narrative; the use of the radio as a motif to provide continuity; and the realistic, full-color illustrations combine to make this story a well-written introduction to the Depression for beginning readers.” Jan Shepherd Ross, Dixie Elementary Magnet School., Lexington, KY
Grade 1-2
Hard Times: an Oral History of the Great Depression
Turkel, Studds
W.W. Norton & Co., 2000
First published in 1970, this classic of oral history features the voices of men and women who lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. It includes the perspectives of ordinary men and women, as well as accounts by congressmen C. Wright Patman and Hamilton Fish, as well as failed presidential candidate Alf M. Landon, who recalls what it was like to be governor of Kansas in 1933. Studs Terkel makes history come alive, drawing out experiences and emotions from his interviewees to the degree few have ever been able to match.
Leah’s Pony *** elementary age reading selection
Friedrich, Elizabeth
Boyds Mills Press, (1999)
From Booklist
Using spare text and eloquent pictures, this picture book focuses on the difficulties that families encountered in the dust bowl, when the "wind blew so hard it turned the sky black with dust." Leah sees her parents' fear when the stock must be sold and the bank plans an auction. Readers will empathize with the girl when she sells her pony and bids her one dollar on the all-important tractor, thus setting off a "penny auction," in which neighbors buy the struggling family's assets for tiny amounts but then return them.
Ages 5-8
Out of the Dust *** young adult reading selection
Hesse, Karen
Scholastic Paperbacks, 1999
“Like the Oklahoma dust bowl from which she came, 14-year-old narrator Billie Jo writes in sparse, free-floating verse. In this compelling, immediate journal, Billie Jo reveals the grim domestic realities of living during the years of constant dust storms: Perhaps swallowing all that grit is what gives Billie Jo--our strong, endearing, rough-cut heroine--the stoic courage to face the grim realities of her life and allows her to discover a simple but profound truth about herself.’. Gail Hudson
(Ages 9 and older)
Potato: A Tale from the Great Depression *** preschool reading selection
Lied, Kate
National Geographic Society, 1997.
From Booklist
“This simple picture book is a family story that brings home the reality of the Great Depression. The narrator, pictured as a young girl with pigtails writing next to a family photo album, tells the true story of her grandparents, Clarence and Agnes, who were young parents when the Depression first hit. When Clarence lost his job, the family lost their house in Iowa. Clarence and Agnes borrowed a car and drove to Idaho to dig potatoes. By day they worked for the farmer; by night, with his permission, they dug potatoes from the picked-over fields for themselves. The work only lasted two weeks, but they arrived back in Iowa with the car stuffed to the ceiling with spuds, a supply that carried them through to better times.” Hazel Rochman
(Ages 5 – 8)
Riding the Rails (Teenagers on the Move During the Great Depression)
Uys, Errol Lincoln
TV Books, LLC, 1999.
From Publishers Weekly
This account of the 250,000 "boxcar boys and girls" who traversed the country during the Great Depression amounts to an oral history of the seldom-studied lives of teenage hoboes. Using material gathered for a documentary film of the same title (made by Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell, the author's son and daughter-in-law), Uys draws on interviews, letters and other fragments from thousands of former rail-riders who answered an announcement in Modern Maturity magazine seeking reminiscences about their lives. A number of anecdotes offer insight into the desperation that led teens to leave impoverished homes.
Rose’s Journal: The Story of a Girl in the Great Depression
Moss, Marissa
Harcourt/Silver Whistle, 2001
From Publishers Weekly
“The latest installment of the Young American Voices series, Rose's Journal: The Story of a Girl in the Great Depression, by Marissa Moss, covers the "Dirty Thirties." Set on a Kansas farm, Rose's pink-lined pages contrast with her handwritten account of dust storms and drought so severe that birds, lacking their usual materials, made nests of barbed wire. Captioned sketches and historical b&w photographs lend authenticity to this well-researched account “
(Ages 8-12)
Treasures in the Dust
Porter, Tracy
HarperTrophy; 1999
“The story of 11-year-old best friends, Annie and Violet, in the Oklahoma Dust Bowl; Annie's family manages to hold on to their farm. Violet's family is eventually driven to seek work in California. The girls tell their stories in alternating first-person narratives and then in letters.”
Ages 9-12
Worst Hard Time: the untold story of those who survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Egan, Timothy
Houghton Mifflin, 2005
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Egan tells an extraordinary tale in this visceral account of how America's great, grassy plains turned to dust, and how the ferocious plains winds stirred up an endless series of "black blizzards" that were like a biblical plague: "Dust clouds boiled up, ten thousand feet or more in the sky, and rolled like moving mountains" in what became known as the Dust Bowl. But the plague was man-made, as Egan shows: the plains weren't suited to farming, and plowing up the grass to plant wheat, along with a confluence of economic disaster—the Depression—and natural disaster—eight years of drought—resulted in an ecological and human catastrophe that Egan details with stunning specificity. He grounds his tale in portraits of the people who settled the plains: hardy Americans and immigrants desperate for a piece of land to call their own and lured by the lies of promoters who said the ground was arable. With characters who seem to have sprung from a novel by Sinclair Lewis or Steinbeck, and Egan's powerful writing, this account will long remain in readers' minds.
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