Product Description

Illus. with photographs from the Dust Bowl era. This true story took place at the emergency farm-labor camp immortalized in Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. Ostracized as "dumb Okies," the children of Dust Bowl migrant laborers went without school--until Superintendent Leo Hart and 50 Okie kids built their own school in a nearby field.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #918722 in Books
• Published on: 1993-07-13
• Released on: 1993-07-13
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 9.30" h x .25" w x 8.06" l, .65 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

From School Library Journal
Grade 6 Up-- 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 remainder of the book is devoted to educator Leo Hart and the role he played in creating a ``federal emergency school.'' Interviews with Hart and the school's former teachers and pupils make Children of the Dust Bowl useful to students of oral history, as well as of the Depression. A thorough index enhances the research value of the book, although it is interesting enough to enjoy for itself. The book is lavishly illustrated with period black-and-white photographs. An informative and inspirational bit of American history. --Joyce Adams Burner, formerly at Spring Hill Middle School, KS
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"The story is inspiring, and Stanley has recorded the details with passion and dignity. An excellent curriculum item."--(starred) Booklist.   

Ingram
A compelling book about the children of homeless "Okie" migrant workers and the school they built at a farm-labor camp in Dust Bowl-era California. Heralded by Kirkus in a pointer review as "lucid, dramatic, and splendidly inspiring," here is a "lavishly illustrated . . . informative and inspirational bit of American history" (School Library Journal, starred review). Illustrated with photos from the Dust Bowl era. 1993 ALA Notable Book; 1992 Notable Children's Trade Book in the Field of Social Studies; 1992 Booklist Editors' Choice; 1992 Library of Congress Book of the Year; 1993 Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction for Children.