The Storm in the Barn

Phelan, Matt.  The Storm in the Barn.  2009.  Candlewick Press, Summerville, MA, USA.

Hardcover, $17.35.  ISBN: 978-0-7636-3618-0.

Book Talk:

Jack lives in Kansas.  The rain has not fallen in four years, and the ground is dead.  People are leaving and moving out, but Jack's family remains.  Jack's sister has what is known as dust pneumonia, and his family believes the he himself is losing his mind.

Jack struggles to help, to find a solution, to make everything alright again so that his sister will survive.

When he finds a strange, lurking figure in an abandoned barn, Jack is intrigued.  Noticing that the figure has a face like lightning, Jack is determined to find out if this strange creature has anything to do with the missing rain, and force it to make the rain come back again.

Is Jack losing his mind, or is there really an entity that controls the rain lurking in the barn?

Find out in... the storm in the barn!

Author's Web Site: http://www.mattphelan.com/

Note from Bettina:
This book is set during the Great Dust Bowl, in Kansas.  Many of the events of this story are true events from that time period.  Matt Phelan states in his end note that he was first inspired by photography of Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein - who took haunting images of the people who lived through the dust bowl.  Further research had Mr. Phelan watching a documentary entitled "Surviving the Dust Bowl".  This haunting film showed actual footage from the Dust Bowl, and included stories and tales from the survivors.  As a result, he began to work on a story, told through the eyes of a child about the Dust Bowl.   It's a haunting tale, a mix of true facts, with just a touch of folk lore tossed in.  After the first reading, I found myself going back again and again, enchanted with the story, and haunted by the circumstances in which these people found themselves.

*The publisher recommends this book for children ages 10 and up.