Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl by Albert Marrin
Posted by: Cindy Dobrez and Lynn Rutan
Lynn: There have been many outstanding books about the Dust Bowl but Marrin’s Years of Dust: The Story of the Dust Bowl (Penguin/Dutton, 2009) is a book that belongs in every public and school library in this country. Even in this year of extraordinary nonfiction, Marrin’s new book stands out with its exemplary writing. Marrin, as always, writes with such clarity that complex subjects become not only accessible to young readers but intensely interesting. Each element feels just right starting with the heart-stopping pictures that have been displayed with riveting effect in an outstanding book design. Marrin’s unusual approach also makes the book noteworthy. He focuses first on the ecology and the human actions that intensified the natural disaster, then examines the impact on the people and places the event in the context of the time. Lastly, he pulls the “Dirty Thirties” out of history and makes starkly clear that this can happen again.
Marrin paints a vivid picture of what the area endured: suffocated children, dust pneumonia, blinded starving animals and quiet desperation, using primary sources that speak vividly of horror and hopelessness. He concludes with the wise words of Chief Seattle who said in 1855, “Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it,” and warns that we should remember these words when we think about the Dust Bowl that was and the dust bowls that yet may be.
Just as I was finishing this book there were reports of huge swirling dust storms in Sydney Australia and in Arizona. Hand this book to your science teachers as well as your history teachers. It is a story our young citizens need to read.
Cindy: Before serving on YALSA’s Best Books for Young Adults Committee, I was not much of a dedicated nonfiction reader. I read the reviews, ordered the books that received stars, those that met curriculum demands, and high interest titles for leisure reading. I let Dewey Decimal numbers, and Sears Subject headings and face out displays do most of the readers advisory in this important area. I figured I needed to spend more of my time reading fiction that needed more hand selling. Boy, was I missing out–and so were my students. Now I read almost as many nonfiction books as I do fiction and incorporate nonfiction booktalks into any session I can, including individual readers’ advisory help in the stacks. For middle school students, a good hook for this book might be to start with the older woman who routinely took off her eyeglasses at meal time so she wouldn’t see the wiggling maggots in the garbage she was eating. “Why was she reduced to this, let me tell you…”
I learned so much about this time period that I’m almost embarrassed to admit what I didn’t know. I didn’t know the dust storms rose two miles in the air.
“Trillions of dust particles striking against each other generated static electricity. Sometimes there was so much electricity in the air that it knocked people down if they shook hands.”
I thought the storms occurred primarily in Oklahoma and Kansas, mostly because the fiction I’ve read about the time period was set in those states. I didn’t realize that Dorothea Lange’s iconic Great Depression photograph “Migrant Mother” was published in violation of the subject’s request and featured a woman who wasn’t necessarily the Dust Bowl refugee she came to symbolize. The story behind the photo is fascinating and I want to research more about that. 
Perhaps the thing that is so haunting about this historic event, even more so than the haunting eyes in the photos of the people it impacted, is that we haven’t learned from it. We are still treating the earth and its ecosystems in a way that can have catastrophic consequences, all in the name of progress. We all need to read and talk about books like this one with our young people.
Check out this week’s Nonfiction Monday round-up at Lori Calabrese Writes!, this week’s host blog.
November 2nd, 2009 at 3:01 pm
I was just hoping to find something on the dustbowl for my third grade ELP reading group. This sounds like something that would work. Does anyone know if this material may be used for this age?
November 2nd, 2009 at 8:54 pm
Angie, I think you should get the book and look at it yourself. Third grade is probably stretching it for an average group, but certainly you could share the photos and some of the text with them.–Cindy