Review by New York Times Review
A Dust Bowl farm in the Texas Panhandle, photographed by Dorothea Lange, from "Years of Dust." A MAN in rumpled clothes walks down a dirt highway. Ahead of him the ground and sky blur together in a bright haze. He has a bedroll slung on one shoulder and stoops a little from the weight. His boots are covered in dust. Turn the page: the man disappears. There's a second photograph, twice as wide, with a road that is achingly empty. Overhead, a black cloud blots out the sky. So begins "Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl," Albert Marrin's engrossing account of what was arguably the worst ecological disaster in American history. When a severe drought struck the Midwest in 1931, farmers had been churning up the Great Plains for more than half a century. Without native grasses to anchor the topsoil, fields crumbled to dust. Millions of acres of arable land were swept away in black blizzards. Hungry families headed west, pinning their hopes on California. Dust blew so far east, it settled on the White House lawn. In the best possible way, "Years of Dust" feels like a museum in the form of a book. Marrin knits together natural science and sociology, news stories, snippets from novels and poems, eyewitness descriptions, journal entries, and the words of hardtime bards like John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie. His selection of photographs - paired with maps, posters, engravings and other artifacts - brings the blown-out landscapes to life. (Imagine how thin our understanding of the Dust Bowl would be without iconic images from documentary photographers like Dorothea Lange. Even in the 1930s, these were events you had to see to believe - without pictures, the truth sounded like hyperbole.) Marrin's writing is particularly evocative when he turns an anthropological eye to the 2.5 million migrants - the so-called "Okies" and "tin-can tourists" - who were driven from their homes and became "refugees in their own land." Of the exodus, he writes: "Rattling and wheezing, coated with dust, the aging vehicles swayed under loads they were not designed to bear. Inside and outside, tied to the trunk, roof and running boards, were all the family's worldly possessions. There were bedsprings and bedding; tools; groceries; pots, pans, dishes and silverware; baskets, bottles, basins and buckets; washtubs and washboards. Now and then, a goat or chickens rode in a cage tied to a running board. Passengers scarcely had space for themselves." Kids will recognize most of these worldly possessions. They offer a bridge to the past, making the refugees' extraordinary circumstances tangible. This technique is nothing new; Tim O'Brien recited lists of objects to illustrate personality and motivation in "The Things They Carried." But Marrin uses it well here, revealing how migrant families wanted nothing more than to recreate a sense of home. "Years of Dust" also puts young readers in the shoes of Dust Bowl survivors with heartbreaking photos that focus on children: three boys in overalls crammed into the backseat of a car in Muskogee County, Okla.; a little girl holding her mother's hand as they step over a drainage ditch in a California squatter camp. In a few places, Marrin's efforts to enliven his already lively material tip over into melodrama. (Toward the end of a long section on swarming locusts: "Young children, caught outdoors, screamed in terror as the insects' claws caught in their hair and bodies wriggled into their clothing." Aieee! It's a B-movie.) And there's a hole at the end. The book's final chapter, "Future Dust Bowls," warns readers about man-made environmental disasters on the horizon, including desertification in China and the Amazon. This section is invaluable; it links the Dust Bowl to present-day problems. So it seems strange that there's no mention of global warming. Gripes aside, though, "Years of Dust" is a lucid and powerful book. "The Dust Bowl Through the Lens" visits similar territory, including many of the same photographs, as "Years of Dust." Unfortunately, it's not as cohesive. The book is organized in a series of double-paged spreads, each a mini-chapter on a new theme, presented in a rigid format: text on the left, photograph on the right. This layout makes the narrative feel choppy and, at times, unbalanced. Some topics, like "Coping With Hardship," deserve more than a page, while others warrant less. After a brief introduction, Martin W. Sandler, the author, jumps into his first mini-chapter, discussing "Migrant Mother," Dorothea Lange's celebrated portrait of a destitute woman huddled with three young children. But the full emotional impact of this photo isn't available so early in the book; Sandler has barely begun to explain the historical context that makes the image so moving. The main message of the book - that "pictures shocked the government and then inspired it to take needed action" - is a bit overwrought. Sometimes the story feels torn between two intersecting historical arcs, the crisis of the Dust Bowl and the rise of documentary photography. But in a few memorable spreads, like "Portraying a Nation in Hard Times" and "Reformer With a Camera" - the balance works beautifully. "THE STORM IN THE BARN," a graphic novel by Matt Phelan, offers a very different look at Dust Bowl hardships. In pencil, ink and watercolor Phelan depicts Kansas as a vast, hazy landscape of muted colors. The palette brightens only when 11-year-old Jack imagines another place: his mother describes life before the drought, or a kindly storekeeper spins a yarn whose hero (also named Jack) conquers a twoheaded giant. If the family farm were up and running, Jack would have plenty to do. But the crops are gone. His sister has dust pneumonia. Bullies pick on him at school. Surrounded by forces that - literally and figuratively - are much bigger than he is, Jack feels powerless. These are promising ingrethents for a plot, but Phelan undermines them with sinister scenes that create a sense of quiet dread but don't go anywhere. Jack wonders about snakes nailed to fence posts, a superstitious effort to bring rain. He watches men bludgeon ravenous jackrabbits to death with spades, pipes and baseball bats. The ending is a tangle of violence. Jack finds himself face to face with the Storm King, an evil spirit who withheld the rain to win power. "Do you believe in the power of the Rain?" the spirit hisses. "Do you fear the Storm, boy?" (At this point, Jack lies on the floor of the barn as the Storm King forces rain down his throat, an act that, as it's depicted here, bears an unfortunate resemblance to waterboarding.) Jack finally wins a climactic battle on top of a windmill, and it starts to rain. He's saved everyone. Unless you go with a possibility suggested earlier in the book: Jack has "dust dementia" and has imagined the whole thing. Either way, the fight doesn't feel all that redemptive. Dropping a supernatural enemy into an environment that's already so alien and strange is overkill, like setting a vampire movie on the moon. Once you've got the moon, why would you want to tack on vampires? For a rich, fully formed work of fiction about this period, "Out of the Dust" - Karen Hesse's 1998 Newbery Medal-winning verse novel - is probably still your best bet. Jessica Bruder teaches journalism at Columbia University and is the author of "Burning Book: A Visual History of Burning Man."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 26, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Beginning with the cover photograph of a town dwarfed by the thousand-foot-high clouds of a black blizzard, this exceptional overview brings close the terrifying, bleak realities of the Dust Bowl. With his usual clear and thorough approach, veteran author Marrin puts the era into both historical and environmental context, starting with the ecology of the Great Plains and moving on to the human behavior that contributed to the catastrophe. Marrin's narrative drama occasionally feels overwrought: It seemed like an evil spirit had splashed an immense bucket of black paint across the sky. Throughout, though, the lively prose delivers a strong sense of how the Dust Bowl occurred and what its survivors endured. Numerous well-integrated first-person accounts bring even more immediacy, and readers won't forget the heartbreaking details of daily survival, both for those who stayed on the Plains and for the refugees who fled to become migrant workers. Among the riveting images that fill the well-designed pages are archival posters, news clippings, maps, and photographs, including Dorothea Lange's indelible portraits. In a final cautionary chapter, Marrin discusses global trouble spots that could lead to even more cataclysmic Dust Bowls in the future. A time line, glossary, and chapter notes round out this exemplary cross-curricular title that encourages students to find the urgent connections between the Dirty Thirties and our current environmental crisis.--Engberg, Gillian Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Calling it "the worst environmental disaster in American history," historian Marrin (The Great Adventure) chronicles the Dust Bowl of the 1930s-its causes, devastation, aftermath and potential to recur. The large format allows for plenty of sidebars, maps and striking sepia photographs as Marrin addresses wide-ranging topics, from a discussion of prairie ecology to the story behind Dorothea Lange's famous "Migrant Mother" photograph. Nine chapters detail events leading up to the demise of the prairie grasslands and the tragedies of those affected by the severe dust storms that followed. Easily comprehensible, the lengthy narrative leaves nothing undefined. Numerous side panels place aspects of the tragedy in context, e.g., in recounting the slaughter of buffalo, a sidebar shows a drawing of a buffalo hunter on the cover of Harper's Weekly ("Hunters were social outcasts. Even the army did not want them"). The captions also offer relevant information. Marrin ends with a warning that this type of avoidable disaster can strike again (he notes the dust storms currently taking place in China). A glossary, extensive bibliography and index wrap up this thorough work. Ages 9-up. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-9-Marrin begins with an overview of the natural history of the Great Plains, describing its unique geography and delicate ecological balance. Next, he discusses how the American ranchers and farmers who migrated into the region "invited disaster" by "changing the ecology" of the area, destroying native plants and animals and using farming techniques that left the soil vulnerable to the heat and droughts of the 1930s. The Dust Bowl and the human suffering it caused are put into the larger context of the Great Depression. New Deal efforts to change farming practices and the implementation of conservation measures are also explained. The book closes with a warning about the worldwide dangers of overuse of land and expanding desertification. Numerous sidebars provide more information about topics mentioned in the main text. The author writes with his usual clarity and flair and uses excerpts from primary-source accounts and literature to give voice to the people who explored and settled the plains as well as those who suffered through this environmental disaster. The narrative is supplemented with several maps and large, riveting reproductions of period photos and illustrations. This title covers much of the same ground as Diane Yancey's Life During the Dust Bowl (Gale, 2004), but Marrin's outstanding writing and the high-quality illustrations make this cautionary tale a worthy addition.-Mary Mueller, Rolla Junior High School, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Marrin's approach to the story of the Dust Bowl is unique in its focus on ecology, arguing that the ignorant and exploitive practices of farmers, hunters and ranchers made the catastrophe worse than it needed to be. Hunting indigenous species such as the buffalo and prairie dog to near extinction, killing off predators of smaller animals, introducing cattle grazing and destroying the natural landscape for farms and settlements all set the stage for the disaster to come. The author does not neglect the miseries suffered by families living in the afflicted areas, however, placing the story in the context of the Great Depression and explaining how what was happening in the Great Plains was yet another sign to Americans of the country's downward spiral. The author concludes with a discussion of modern ecological disasters in the making. The engaging narrative includes quotes from a variety of primary sources, and it is abundantly illustrated throughout with photographs and other archival material, making this a reader-friendly, insightful work of history. (glossary, notes, further resources, bibliography, index, timeline) (Nonfiction. 10-16) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
