Dust Devil
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Here is the thrilling, thigh-slapping companion to Swamp Angel, the beloved Caldecott Honor–winning picture book.
Swamp Angel has a reputation as the greatest woodswoman and wildest wildcat in all of Tennessee. But when she grows too big for that state, she moves to Montana, a place so sizeable, even Angel can fit in. It’s there that she wrestles a raging storm to the ground and, at its center, finds herself a sidekick—a horse she names Dust Devil. And when Backward Bart, the orneriest, ugliest outlaw ever known, starts terrorizing the prairie, seems like Angel and Dust Devil may be the only ones strong enough to stop him.
Dust Devil received four starred reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Children's Book of the Year and an Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Winner. Children will be captivated by the beauty and exaggerated humor of Paul Zelinsky’s American primitive–style paintings and the wit and energy of Anne Isaacs’s unparalleled storytelling. Here is an original folktale starring an extraordinary gal who is as feisty as she is funny and as courageous as she is kind.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this romping sequel, Isaacs's far-fetched tall tale is again paired with Zelinsky's stunning American-primitive paintings, framed by the wood upon which they are painted. Isaacs opens with a nod to the first lines of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn "Unless you've read a book called Swamp Angel, you may not know about Angelica Longrider." The beginning of the story, in which Angel gets settled in her new home of Montana, is clever if overlong ("That's a beaut," she says creating Montana's buttes), but Isaacs more than delivers with a battle royal between Angel and a band of mosquito-riding cowboy scoundrels. Zelinsky's action-packed panoramas capture Angel's Paul Bunyanlike strength; when Angel rides a "bucking blast" of wind, Zelinsky morphs the tornado into a magnificent, cloud-colored horse that Angel names Dust Devil. Isaacs wraps her narrative in exaggeration that will have kids howling; "Talk about mean!" she says of Backward Bart's villainous gang. "They were pricklier than porcupines in a cactus patch." And she hints about a possible sequel when the desperadoes' gold fillings wash "downstream, all the way to California.... But that's another story." Ages 5 9.
