Out of the Dust

Home for Columbus Day weekend, I decided to give another children's book a go. This time around it was Newbery Award winner Out of the Dust, the fictional diary of an awkward girl living in 1930s Dust Bowl Oklahoma. I went in with expectations that could best be described as "exceptionally low," given that the last Newbery-winning teenage girl historically fictional diary I had read, A Gathering of Days, was one of the most pointless and substance-lacking books I had ever read. But this one was better. Much better. It was written in some kind of poetic broken verse. By this I mean that it was grammatically fine, written in punctuated and complete sentences, but with random sporadic carriage returns that probably served to add some kind of rhythm or emphasis but did nothing of the sort. But they made the book a much quicker read, and 227 pages were done in about an hour. Perfect. The book itself was also much stronger and less sugar-coated than I expected any children's book to be. There were passages in the book that made me wince and grimace, physically, as I read them. Descriptions of foodstuffs caked with dust and livestock drowning in mud weren't the most pleasant to imagine. One particular scene involving a bucket of kerosene was especially gruesome and powerful. Kudos to author Karen Hesse for writing a kids' book without neglecting the gritty bits. I liked this book much more than I expected to like any of my remaining backlogged Newbery winners. Does this mean I'll now look forward to reading the rest of them? Hardly. But it does mean I finally felt rewarded, even if only a tiny amount, for daring to merge my childhood's backlog with my present-day one. Oh, and I think I might finally be done with '30s-era tales, both in print and on video. But we'll see.