Karen Hesse

The Great Depression	The Dust Bowl	Franklin Delano Roosevelt	Karen Hesse	Children's Lives
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Introduction
Childhood Memories
Education
Idea to Write Out of the Dust
Conclusion

Introduction

Out of the Dust is a wonderful novel written by Karen Hesse. It has won an amazing number of awards including the Newberry Medal for 1998, and an ALA notable children’s book. Karen Hesse has a family of two teenage daughters, a husband, a dog, and two cats. She and her family live in Brattleboro, Vermont. Her favorite activities are reading, hiking, traveling, searching through bookstores, studying, conducting interviews, listening and playing music and spending time with her family and friends. Karen Hesse loves writing for younger readers, “Younger readers give me a challenging and demanding career these are the most rewarding people to write for.”

Childhood Memories

Karen Hesse said that she has many spectacular memories of her child life. Karen Hesse was born in Baltimore, Maryland where she lived with her family. When Karen Hesse realized that her thoughts and ideas were very different from her other friends, she decided to keep her inner life a secret. Almost everyday she would get home and lock herself in her closet to express feeling in writing poetry. A lot of the time when Karen Hesse was younger, she could easily walk to and from school, so she would stay after school and swing for hours. She and her friend Joey would do many things together, for instance, going to the Cylburn Park where they would get lost in mother natures creation. Also during the summer they would catch lighting bugs, and do talent shows with some of Karen Hesse’s other friends. When Karen Hesse was 10 years old she thought of herself as good with words. This idea was supported by her 5th grade teacher, Mrs. Datnoff, who believed her to be a good writer. It took Karen Hesse 30 years to fulfill her dream as an author, but she finally made it.

Education

Karen Hesse attended Towson St. College, and graduated from the University of Maryland. In college she majored in theater, anthropology, psychology, and English. After college Karen Hesse had many jobs related to books such as a proofreader, a typesetter, and a librarian. After college, Karen Hesse started a career as an author, although her true dream was to become a conductor. As an author she would go out and take in interesting details in our everyday world. “Some details make my heart ache, they take my breath away and some of those details become my books.”

Idea to write Out of the Dust

Karen Hesse had an idea about writing Out of the Dust from a magazine article on the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) in Vermont during the 1920s. She read the horrid article in disbelief. The real idea of Out of the Dust came from the picture book Come on Rain. When Karen Hesse tried to disprove the article she found out that it was really true. She decided to do some researching on time period and began making a book, the book Out of the Dust.

Conclusion

“I still have a baby tooth and I think as long as I have this baby tooth I will still have my childish state of mind” These words were spoken through Karen Hesse. I felt, while reading Out of the Dust that Karen Hesse spent a lot of time and hard work pulling the book together which I think is one of the best things to come out of an author but a better thing is that she had fun, which it seems like since I had a fun reading her book. Karen Hesse is a wonderful author and I have really enjoyed reading one of her books, Out of the Dust.