Out of the Dust

On March 4, 1791, Vermont became the 14th state admitted to the Union. Certainly at the time, the event did not seemed connected to the children’s book community. But by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Vermont had emerged as one of the best environments for those who create books for children and young adults. Part of this seems due to the incredible work going on at Vermont College’s MFA program for children’s book writers in Montpelier. Life in this still largely rural area encourages time for reflection. A very active library and bookstore community supports Vermont writers and illustrators. Our second National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, Katherine Paterson, lives in Vermont, as does Caldecott winner Mary Azarian. In addition M. T. Anderson, Eileen Christelow, Leda Schubert, Tanya Lee Stone, Laban Carrick Hill, and Bonnie Christensen live full or part time in the state, as did Stephen Huneck and Norma Fox Mazer. The list goes on and on and includes our author of the day, Newbery Award Winner Karen Hesse.

When Karen took a road trip from Vermont to Colorado with author Liza Ketchum (a part-time Vermonter), Karen fell in love with the Kansas plains, a landscape very different from the one she looked at every day. Later she thought about this landscape, when writing a picture book, Come on, Rain!, about a child longing for rain showers. As she ask herself why a child might want a rain shower, she thought about the Oklahoma Dust Bowl in the 1930s and set her next novel there. In the book for eleven- to sixteen-year-olds, Out of the Dust, explores the life of fourteen-year-old Billie Jo. Crops blow away like tumbleweeds, tractors get buried under dust drifts, and Billie Jo’s mother dies in a tragic accident that physically scars the young girl. In this grief-filled landscape she and her father must make the best of what they have left.

In Out of the Dust Karen explores the longing, anguish, and pain of living and shows how people heal from tragedy. Written in free-form poetic verse, Karen polished every word, phrase, and line break with care from the opening sentence to the final one: “And I stretch my fingers over the keys, / and I play.”

After Karen wrote the first draft of the manuscript, she went out to find photographs of what her characters might look like, placing them around her studio. But she never admitted to this writing method, because it might seem “hokey.” So Karen was amazed when her editor Brenda Bowen chose the photo of Lucille Burroughs by Walker Evans for the cover; it was the same photo that Karen herself had used while writing the book—although she had never told her editor.

Happy Vermont Statehood Day to Karen and all those in the children’s and young adult book community in Vermont. I’m so glad we are near neighbors. You rock!

Here’s a page from Out of the Dust: