Karen Hesse is an American author of books for children and young adults.
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Hesse began writing poetry while pursuing a B.A. in English at the University of Maryland, College Park. She debuted as a children's author in 1991 with Wish on a Unicorn, followed by the children's historical novel Letters to Rifka in 1992. Her 1997 novel Out of the Dust won the Newbery Medal and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction. Hesse was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2002.
Out of the Dust is a children's historical novel, written in verse, about a teenage girl and her family struggling to survive on their Oklahoma Panhandle wheat farm during the Depression.
Narrated by Billie Jo Kelby, the book's protagonist, Out of...
