Miss Freeland said our grade ...

Miss Freeland said our grade topped the entire state of Oklahoma on the state tests again, twenty-four points higher than the state average. Wish I could run home and tell Ma and see her nod
and hear her say, "I knew you could." It would be enough. January 1935 - P104

Being there without Ma,
without the baby,
wouldn’t have been so bad,
if I’d just remembered the cranberry sauce.
My father loved Ma’s special cranberry sauce.
But she never showed me how to make it.

January 1935 - P105

I hear the first drops. Like the tapping of a stranger at the door of a dream, the rain changes everything. It strokes the roof, streaking the dusty tin, ponging, a concert of rain notes, spilling from gutters, gushing through gullies, soaking into the thirsty earth outside. - P109

Real Snow The dust stopped,...

Real Snow

The dust stopped,
and it
snowed.
Real snow.
Dreamy Christmas snow,
gentle,
nothing blowing,
such calm,
like after a fever,
wet,
clinging to the earth,
melting into the dirt,
snow.

Oh, the grass, and the wheat
and the cattle,
and the rabbits,
and my father will be happy.

November 1934 - P97

<Dance Revue>
He doesn’t look at me like I’m a poor motherless thing. He doesn’t stare at my deformed hands. He looks at me like I am someone he knows, someone named Billie Jo Kelby. I’m grateful for that, especially considering how bad I’m playing.
December 1934 - P98

[오늘의 한문장] The Grapes of Wrath

TO THE RED COUNTRY and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were dissipated. The sun flared down on the growing corn day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country.

Ma has been nursing these two...

Ma has been nursing these two trees for as long as I can remember. In spite of the dust, in spite of the drought, because of Ma’s stubborn care, these trees are thick with blossoms, delicate and pinky-white. - P55

My eyes can’t get enough of the sight of them. I stand under the trees and let the petals fall into my hair, a blizzard of sweet-smelling flowers, dropped from the boughs of the two placed there in the front yard by Ma before I was born, that she and they might bring forth fruit into our home,
together. May 1934 - P55

[오늘의 한문장] Out of the Dust (Scholastic Gold)

I look at Joe and know our future is drying up and blowing away with the dust."

— Out of the Dust (Scholastic Gold) (Newbery Medal Book) by Karen Hesse
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