Great product!</br></br>Product Description</br></br><div><div>This gripping story?? written in sparse first-person?? free-verse poems?? is the compelling tale of Billie Jo's struggle to survive during the dust bowl years of the Depression. With stoic courage?? she learns to cope with the loss of her mother and her grieving father's slow deterioration. There is hope at the end when Billie Jo's badly burned hands are healed?? and she is able to play her beloved piano again. The 1998 Newbery Medal winner.</div></div></br></br>Amazon.com Review</br></br>Like the Oklahoma dust bowl from which she came?? 14-year-old narrator Billie Jo writes in sparse?? free-floating verse. In this compelling?? immediate journal?? Billie Jo reveals the grim domestic realities of living during the years of constant dust storms: That hopes--like the crops--blow away in the night like skittering tumbleweeds. That trucks?? tractors?? even Billie Jo's beloved piano?? can suddenly be buried beneath drifts of dust. Perhap