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

By Jerry Stanley

Children of the Dust Bowl: The True Story of the School at Weedpatch Camp is the 1993 Orbis Pictus Award recipient.  It tells the story of the "Okie" children known as the "Children of the Dust Bowl."  These are children of migrant families who moved from the Panhandle to California during what is known as "The Dust Bowl" of 1936-1940.  Extremely hard winds and lack of rain, as well as extreme poverty, caused families from the Panhandle to seek out new opportunities for work in another location.  Hundreds of families packed their few belongings and followed Route 66 to hunt for jobs in California, where they heard many laborers were needed.  However, they were met with rejection by most of the people and very few jobs were available.  Since they had no place to stay, the Okies started to camp out, but lived in extremely undesirable conditions.  The government built several farm-labor camps for the Okies to live in.  One of these was known as Weedpatch Camp.  Many Okie families moved in to the camps, and their children started going to school.  The other students at school rejected the Okie children, and every day problems emerged because of this.

A man by the name of Leo Hart enjoyed visiting and playing with the Okie children who played in the field by Weedpatch Camp.  He became the superintendent of the local school district and began to work at putting together a school for the Okie children.  Using donations and the labor of teachers and children, Hart began building Weedpatch School.  Eventually this school became so great that the people who once rejected Okie children from their own children's schools wanted to enroll their children at this school.

Jerry Stanley does a magnificent job of telling the story of courage and perseverance that led to the building of Weedpatch School.  The facts presented by the author throughout the book come from trustworthy resources which he gives credit to at the end of the book.  A useful table of contents and index help readers to find specific information from the book.  The author writes clearly and maintains the reader's interest as the story develops.  The photographs throughout the book bring to life all the stories that are told by the author; there are actual photos of children he talks about, as well as of the difficult conditions and hard work the author describes.  The book follows a logical sequence that builds up to the ultimate success of many of the Okie children from Weedpatch School.