Prairie Apocalypse : Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl by Albert Marrin

I noticed a low dark line of what I first thought was a cloud along the northern horizon. It made no sense. There was not a cloud in the sky. As I watched, it got taller and spread from the west to the east horizon. The black mass was coming on so fast.... The front of the cloud was a rolling, tumbling, boiling mass of dust and dirt about two hundred feet high, almost vertical, and as black as an Angus bull. It came across the prairie like a two-hundred-foot-high tidal wave, pushed along by sixty-mile-per-hour wind. After the front passed, the darkness rivaled the darkness inside a whale resting on the bottom of the ocean at midnight....

On "Black Sunday," April 14, 1935, a monster dust storm, over 1000 miles long, stretching from Canada to Texas, appeared out of a brilliant blue sky, travelling 1500 miles before it blew itself out over the Gulf of Mexico. The overcast from its fallout darkened skies as far east as New York City and left most of the Great Plains adrift in dust which covered houses, barns, and roads up to fifteen feet deep.

Residents of the high plains, most first- and second-generation pioneers drawn to the cheap and seemingly fertile land of the Great Plains after the Civil War, felt as if they were trapped inside a deadly Armageddon, a cycle of unexpected drought and unimaginable dust storms unknown to people of European descent up to this time. Crops, already pitiably sparse from several years of drought, were totally destroyed. Farmers, who only a decade before had known rich harvests and built prosperous towns and neat farms, saw the double demons of Depression and dust destroy everything they had worked for.

In financial ruin, repossessed and dispossessed, the once independent landowners and thrifty tradespeople of the entire region piled whatever they could carry into whatever vehicle had not been taken away by the banks and headed, heartbroken but still hopeful, toward the West Coast in hope of finding work, any work at all, even sending their unschooled children out to pick cotton or strawberries in the fields of California or Oregon. Those less fortunate hopped freight trains or even set out on foot, trying to make it to any place that could offer them food and work. "Hoovervilles" sprouted at highway and railroad crossroads, and men fought over piteously low wages just to keep their families alive.

It was a time for those who experienced it perhaps worse than any our nation has known, when nature itself seems to have foresaken us. Yet, it was in many ways our own doing, born out of our own lack of knowledge of the land. The earliest comers nearly exterminated the indispensable buffalo and the prairie dog, no friends to farming, and their plows, the fabled "sodbusters," broke up the shallow-rooted grasses which had held the scant moisture and thin topsoil in place over the centuries; and when the unnaturally rainy cycle of the early twentieth century faded, the high plains became the semi-arid area which they truly are. Wind had always been a constant there, its steady roar enough to drive some early settlers mad, and with drought and no grass to hold the soil, it began to blow away, taking a fragile, shallow-rooted farm culture with it.

Albert Marrin's Years of Dust (Dutton, 2009) is an absorbing and rich account, rendered in beautiful but child-friendly language, which with its eyewitness accounts brings home the very feel and taste of the time:

All we could do about it was just sit in our dusty chairs, gaze at each other through the fog that filled the room and watch the fog settle slowly and silently, covering everything--including ourselves--in a thick, brownish gray blanket. The doors and windows were all shut tightly, yet those tiny particles seemed to seep through the very walls. It got into cupboards and clothes closets, our faces were as dirty as if we had rolled in the dirt; our hair was gray and stiff and we ground dirt between our teeth.

A beautifully designed book, with cover, photographs, and headings in the same sepia-gray as the dust itself, Years of Dust brings history home in lovely, evocative prose which puts the reader right into those hot, dusty farm trucks creeping west:

The desert had no mercy. Anyone who wandered into it, even a short distance, was bound to get lost and die of exposure. There was no air-conditioning back then, so those crossing in daylight wrapped damp towels around their heads. The windows stayed open, sending a hot breeze through the car.

This epic exodus brought vast changes to America which reverberated far into the second half of the century, and in its apocalyptic warning against imposing our will, willy-nilly, upon Mother Nature still rings strong today. Gradually, rains returned, albeit unpredictably, to the region, but prairie towns continue to vanish to this day and farmers have had to adapt their methods to the harsh environment which is the true nature of the high plains.

Filled with strongly evocative photos, many those iconic stills created by Dorothea Lange, this is a piece of nonfiction perfectly adapted to the middle reader who wants to get behind the quick paragraphs in their history textbooks and see into the heart of those terrible, yet valiant times which tested the timbre of our people. A generously designed book, it offers informative sidebars, maps, posters and newspaper pages, and glimpses of such figures as Woody Guthrie, Franklin Roosevelt, and Chief Seattle, whose prophetic words still speak straight to us today. Marrin covers the man-made remedies to the Depression-Dust Bowl tragedy--the New Deal programs which put millions of men to work and millions of children back to school, the changes in agriculture which stabilized the soil, and the voluntary relocation of population to more productive locales--but it is the faces of the people, especially the children of the Dust Bowl, whose eyes look straight out at us and say to us that they are willing and determined to do what they have to do, that best tell the story of those times.

The author concludes with a brief consideration of "future dust bowls," mapping the current deforestation of areas such as the Amazon basin and the Sahel. He writes

The worst tragedies in history have owed more to human folly than to nature. But what has been, need not be forever. People make their own history--it does not make them.

Ample appendices--with glossary, bibliography of nonfiction and fiction, film, music, and web links--make this book a solid source for further study.

Hands-On History: America: The Making of A Nation

With its handsome red, white, and blue embossed cover, Little Brown Publishing's AMERICA: The Making of a Nation is impossible to resist picking up and paging through.

A striking example of the "toy and movable book" genre, this book does not pretend to be a linear presentation of American history. Rather, it begins with a purported hand-written note to the reader signed by one "Charlie Samuels," a sort-of American Everyman who comes upon the artifacts of an earlier fellow countryman:

Dear Reader:

I found this tattered suitcase in the dusty corner of my attic. I don't know who left it there, but I when opened it and began to read the journal inside. I knew how very special it was. I spent hours sifting through all of the mementos and treasures collected. What I discovered was not only the story of one man's life and experiences, but also the events and pioneering spirit that led to the making of a great nation.

Enjoy this special glimpse back into history, past and present. Remember that it belongs to each one of us--it is the history of America.

Yours,
Charlie Samuels

Inside the book opens into a double-page collage of Americana--the back of a two-dollar bill showing John Trumball's painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, a Kennedy campaign logo, a ticket for the transcontinental railroad, an eagle feather, an Apollo 11 patch--and a fold-out copy of the personal journal which Charlie finds in that old valise.

The following page shows a collage of souvenirs which the journal's creator collected when invited with his World War II comrades to a White House dinner. Affixed flap books--a White House Souvenir Pocket Guide, a lift-the-flap facsimile postcard of the Washington Monument mailed from Washington--all on a pastiche of informational sources about the nation's capital, teach the reader about that historic place. Another double-page collage of historic American music features a lift-out facsimile of nineteenth-century sheet music for The Star Spangled Banner, which slips inside a collage of 78 rpm records of Old Man River (who knew Judy Garland recorded this one?) and This Land Is Your Land (ditto for Bruce Springsteen!), and a multi-fold pull-out with all the verses for the "patriotic songs" Stars and Stripes Forever, Oh, Shenandoah, and America The Beautiful.

Other pages offer flaps containing a half-page die-cut flap of the Mount Rushmore figures, backed by a list of the presidents and their terms, as well as symbols of the nation, a Union & Central Pacific Railroad ticket, postcards from Monument Valley and Niagara Falls, an "Inspection Card" for immigrants passing through Ellis Island, and a sealed envelope with an impressive replica of the Declaration of Independence. Each double-page spread provides a collage of information arranged by theme--"From Sea to Shining Sea" (maps and historic destinations), "Welcome to America," (the Statue of Liberty, a skyscraper-themed bar graph of the waves of immigration by country of origin), and "Words to Make a Nation," (noted quotations from all eras). One striking spread features a timeline of America laid out as tree rings on a cross-section of a "Liberty Tree."

Not at all a history textbook, AMERICA: The Making of a Nation is a browsing book in the best sense of the word, a book which inspires interest and reinforces classroom knowledge as the reader follows the fictional journal writer through his lifelong discovery of America's places, people, and spirit. Sturdy enough for libraries and striking enough for a coffee-table book, this one is a beauty at a bargain price.

Juxtaposed on the final spread are two intriguing quotations, separated by almost two centuries, which seems to sum up both America's hard-headed realism and boundless optimism:

"Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." --Benjamin Franklin

"There is nothing wrong with America that faith, love of freedom, and the energy of her citizens cannot cure." --Dwight Eisenhower

You Are There! The Titanic: An Interactive History Adventure by Bob Temple

In an instant, a huge crash sends you flying.

In the distance, you hear the sound of watertight doors slamming shut. One of the nearby watertight doors is still open. Water has begun rushing into your compartment. There's no time to waste. You have only a split second to decide what to do. . . .

You dive for the door. Two or three others make it through before the heavy metal door slams shut. You can hear your fellow stokers pounding on the other side. But it's too late to help them.

Soon you see an officer. He tells you what has happened--Titanic has struck ice.

In its You Choose Books Capstone Press has put the "Choose Your Own. . ." format, wildly popular in fantasy and mystery potboilers almost two decades ago, to good use, illuminating some of the major events of history in a reader-friendly interactive design.

In Bob Temple's The Titanic: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose Books) (You Choose Books), for example, a brief story line aboard the doomed ship is introduced with the reader playing typical characters. At a crucial juncture in the story, the "character" is given two credible choices--in the above vignette, the boiler room stoker may choose to stay and help the injured workers ("Turn to page 96") OR to dive through the doors before they close and seal him hopelessly inside the bowels of the sinking ship ("Turn to page 80").

This title features three distinct strands: the reader may initially choose to hang out with the very rich, dining with John Jacob Astor, to travel with the immigrants on the lowest passenger deck in third class, or to experience the disaster as a member of the crew of the Titanic. Within these three "paths," you can stand beside Astor as he bravely refuses to board a lifeboat with his wife and children, vowing to "see you in New York" as he stays to go down with other gallant men who honored the "women and children first" rule. The reader can choose to be English-speaking immigrant passengers who beg a young officer to unlock the wire gates and allow them to try to board the last lifeboats on deck, or choose to be a non-English-speaking working girl who finds herself up late, singing and dancing with a young man named Tony, who, seeing the last lifeboat being lowered, grabs her hand and jumps with her into the lifeboat and thus into a long life as a Titanic survivor. Conversely, the reader can put himself or herself into the shoes of a crewman who survives when an officer orders him into a lifeboat to row its load of mothers and children clear of the rapidly tilting ship.

There's no fancy writing here, but the events themselves are so gripping and the choices so real that readers will be instantly drawn into the action. This format has special appeal for reluctant readers: the style is brisk, with a minimum of character development, and each of the individual episodes within the 35 choices and 15 endings takes only a a few pages to reach its conclusion. It's hard to resist the temptation to go back and follow the alternative choices to see how the outcomes change, and the reader cannot help but grasp the role that individual choice and random luck played in the life or death of the Titanic's passengers. Middle readers who are accustomed to following live links in computer programs will relish the similar print options offered by this clever format.

Other major historic events in this series include The Attack on Pearl Harbor: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose Books), The Alamo: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose Books) (You Choose Books), The Underground Railroad: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose Books) (You Choose Books) The Battle of Bull Run: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose Books), and The Golden Age of Pirates: An Interactive History Adventure (You Choose Books) (You Choose Books), as well as many other significant events in American history. Each one comes complete with supportive back matter--a time line, suggestions for further study, bibliographies, internet sites (limited to age-appropriate sources), a glossary, and index. It's history made (virtually) painless.

History Mysteries: Circle of Fire by Evelyn Coleman

In the center of the clearing, Mendy could see a large wooden cross wrapped in white rags. Sticks were piled under it like a bonfire waiting to be lit. A man standing near it began yelling into a megaphone. "White is Right!" The other men pumped their fists into the air and shouted, "White is Right! White is Right! White is Right!"

One man yelled, "So what are we going to do about the commie witch?"

The summer Mendy Anna Thompson turns twelve is not what she had hoped for. Mama seems to want to keep her close at home all the time, her lifelong white friend Jeffrey is suddenly forbidden to play with her, and someone has killed her tame rabbit, wrapping it in a cloth printed with a strange cross inside a circle. The only thing to look forward to is Daddy's promise to take her to the Highlander Center to hear her hero Eleanor Roosevelt speak.

Then, secretly hiding in the woods nearby, Mendy and Jeffrey witness a Ku Klux Klan rally and discover that the Klan plans to bomb the Center and assassinate Mrs. Roosevelt. When they learn that their sheriff and even Jeffrey's father are part of the Klan's plot, Mendy and Jeffrey realize that they must work out their own plan to stop the attack.

Circle of Fire (American Girl History Mysteries) is a suspenseful mystery in which the resourceful Mendy spies upon the racist rallies and identifies their leaders by observing their hands and shoes. Like all the entries in the American Girl History Mysteries, this novel is based upon an actual event, one in which an informer within the Klan (who in this book is Jeffrey's father) warns the FBI of the plot to bomb the Highlander Center during Eleanor Roosevelt's visit. The History Mysteries are a well-written and researched series which puts the reader "on the ground" during some pivotal moments in American history.

An appendix ("Looking Back, 1958"), illustrated with photos from the period, fills in the historical background of the early labor movement and Civil Rights era, especially the work of the Tennessee Highlander Center where Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks studied and were inspired.