This is a super gentle look at the Great Depression and Dust Bowl time period for lower middle grade readers, 1st-3rd grades, approximately. At 151-pages, it’s a step above a chapter book, but not by much, and as such, the soul-crushing reality of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression are muted quite a bit in the story.
Ginny’s father is forced to sell her horse, Thimble, to raise money to keep the family farm. It’s never entirely clear the exact year the story takes place but given the ending note of hope for the future, I’d say early on in the Dust Bowl, before the drought had taken its toll. The bone-dry drought lasted a crushing 11 years and even with improvements in farming practices, which are portrayed in the story as the family’s salvation, it took a long time for farms to recuperate and many families were crushed between drought and the Stock Market crash.
Thinking she’s doing the best thing she can for her family, Ginny runs away, taking Thimble with her before the horse can be sold, but she gets the dust sickness in her lungs and Thimble is injured while taking her back home.
She makes an unlikely ally, just as many kids who left their families when there was nothing left to eat and rode the rails during the Great Depression, and a bit of that cultural phenomenon is shown as well.
The series is really intended for horse lovers, but the setting was what caught my attention. Enjoy!
Teachers Note:
If you're interested in teaching the Great Depression, and the economic factors that played into what was possibly America's most crushing economic era, please take a look at my unit, Great Depression: Economics and Literature.
This unit doesn't get a lot of downloads, because I think most (many?) teachers are afraid of economics, in general. Don't be! Have fun learning with your students. And I make that easy: I offer several lesson plans for classroom simulations that my 8th graders simply ate up! You do need to print or have handy a fair amount of "play" money. I printed and laminated my own, but you can find Monopoly money at second-hand stores and use that. Do what's easiest and cost-effective for you and your classroom.
But the kids really loved these econ sims!
The LPs include an international trade simulation, an inflation auction, a simulation that demonstrates the role banks play in creating the money supply, and a bank run. I also recommend the classic verse book by Karen Hesse, Out of the Dust, and offer teaching resources for it, as well.
