{"id":918,"date":"2009-11-25T12:53:03","date_gmt":"2009-11-25T16:53:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=918"},"modified":"2009-11-25T12:53:03","modified_gmt":"2009-11-25T16:53:03","slug":"review-of-the-storm-in-the-barn-by-matt-phelan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=918","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Storm in the Barn, by Matt Phelan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"storm_in_the_barn\"The Storm in the Barn<\/em><\/p>\n

by Matt Phelan<\/p>\n

Candlewick Press, 2009. 201 pages.
\nStarred Review.<\/p>\n

The Storm in the Barn<\/em>, like L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz,<\/em> is a uniquely American fairy tale, but this one is written in the form of a graphic novel.<\/p>\n

Given the setting of the Dust Bowl, this book shows us poor dejected Jack Clark, a kid who’s eleven years old and hasn’t ever seen rain since he was seven. The doctor thinks he may have dust dementia, as his sister has dust pneumonia. <\/p>\n

Jack isn’t sure himself. Is it dust dementia, or is he really seeing an evil man made out of a thunderstorm, with lightning in his bag, a man who is hiding in the old abandoned barn and causing all their troubles? If Jack can release the lightning, can he save the country?<\/p>\n

The images in this book are haunting and surreal. They will leave the reader wanting to know more about this bit of American history. I like the way the author weaves in Jack’s sister reading from Baum’s Oz books, since telling American fairy tales was exactly what Baum also tried to do, along with Jack tales from Europe that fit right in with Jack’s own story.<\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Fiction\/storm_in_the_barn.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Storm in the Barn by Matt Phelan Candlewick Press, 2009. 201 pages. Starred Review. The Storm in the Barn, like L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, is a uniquely American fairy tale, but this one is written in the form of a graphic novel. Given the setting of the Dust Bowl, this book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,9,37,32,42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-childrens-fiction-review","category-fantasy","category-graphic-novel","category-historical","category-starred-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=918"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/918\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}