Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp

by Jerry Stanley

Overview

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

ISBN-13:	9780517880944
Publisher:	Random House Children's Books
Publication date:	07/13/1993
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	96
Sales rank:	60,451
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 9.31(h) x 0.29(d)
Lexile:	1120L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

* Jerry Stanley was born in Highland Park, Michigan in 1941.  When he was seventeen years old, he joined the air force and was stationed in California, where he has lived ever since.

* Once out of the air force, Jerry went to college, during which time he supported himself as a rock-'n'-roll drummer on the weekends.  He received both his master's and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Arizona.  

* Jerry is now is a professor of history at California State University in Bakersfield, where he teaches courses on the American West, the American Indian, and California history.  In addition to his children's books, Jerry is the author of numerous articles for both scholarly journals and popular magazines.

* Among Jerry's hobbies are bowling, racquetball, fishing, drumming, and writing humor.  He and his wife, Dorothy, have four children and live in Bakersfield, CA.  

Editorial Reviews

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

From the Publisher

Gr 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

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