California Or Dust
Eleven-year-old Lark is starting fifth grade in the middle of the semester, having traveled from Oklahoma to central California with her family to escape the relentless dust storms that destroyed the family’s farm. Taught by her mother, she is a confident student, but mean Miss Petty makes her and the other migrant children from Oklahoma sit on the floor without textbooks or school supplies. Everywhere they go, people call them “Okies” and blame them for low wages and high unemployment. Living in a bleak government camp, Lark’s mother slips into depression while her father works long hours to keep them from starving. Lark must skip school many days to work alongside her father or take care of her younger siblings when they fall ill.
Along with hardship is hope in the form of new friends and a school superintendent who wants to give the migrants a chance to help themselves. When he proposes a new emergency school at the migrant camp, Lark, her siblings, and her friends pitch in to help. She hopes their efforts will help her mother recover and fears she is becoming too much like her mother, grieving their old life and worrying about all the bad things that can happen in the future. Ultimately, this is a story about a child facing both material deprivation and a parent’s mental health crisis and struggling not to be broken herself. Wendell’s inspiring novel for middle grade readers is based on a real encampment and a real school, the Weedpatch School, that the migrants built themselves and staffed with idealistic teachers from around the country. An extensive author’s note presents the Dust Bowl, the migration from the Great Plains to California, and some of the real people on which the story is based.
