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One of my favorite novels is Karen Hesse's Newbery winner, Out of the Dust.    

While I had heard of the Dust Bowl and learned about it in school, I was only really able to imagine it when I read Hesse's novel in verse.  I also love that the cover is a primary source photograph of Lucille Burroughs. 

In her Newbery acceptance speech, Hesse thanks her “inspiration…Lucille Burroughs, who stared out at me from the pages of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, imploring me to tell her story…even if I had to make it up.”  I love how the primary source photograph touched Hesse so deeply that she felt the need to tell the story of the girl behind the picture.  

Hesse further explained that when her editor was searching for a cover idea, she stopped in a shop in New York City that featured photography and found a collection of Walker Evans’ images.  She sent this image to Hesse with a post-it note suggesting it would make a “perfect cover.”  Hesse herself “had been focused on this photograph while writing the book.  It sat beside [her] computer along with several other images from the book.  

When I was younger, in acting classes, one of the exercises was to find a portrait and tell that character’s story–what were they thinking and feeling?  Hesse did this with this 1936 primary source photograph.  And this can be a great activity for young patrons to do with primary sources.  Tell the story behind the people in the primary source.  What were they doing just before the photo was taken?  What is life like for them?  What are their hopes and dreams?  

In her acceptance speech, Hesse also talked about the kerosene incident in the book and how it seemed unbelievable to some readers but that it was based on a series of articles from the 1934 Oklahoma People’s Voice.  (The Oklahoma Historical Society has The People’s Voice digitized from 1892-1910, so I was not able to locate a digital copy.  Hesse received her copy of the 1934 paper on microfilm.)

The Library of Congress has a great primary source set about the Dust Bowl as well as a Chronicling America resource guide.  

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