Out of the Dust
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40 free Out of the Dust trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Out of the Dust is one of the most widely taught novels about the Dust Bowl, and one of the quickest to read. Karen Hesse tells it as a diary of brief, dated poems written by Billie Jo, a farm girl growing up on the southern plains while the soil blows away, the crops fail and one terrible accident changes her family for good. This quiz follows the book from its opening poems in winter 1934 through spring 1934 and summer 1934, the hard months after them, spring 1935 and summer 1935, and the hopeful close in autumn 1935. Expect questions on Billie Jo, her parents, her friends and neighbours in Joyce City, the storms and the real history behind them, plus a few on Karen Hesse and how the novel came to be written. It is pitched at students reading the book in class, teachers who want a quick comprehension check, and anyone returning to a story they first met at school. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so the questions work for revision as well as for testing, on screen or printed out.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Out of the Dust, what does the pail left beside the stove hold when Ma mistakes it for water?
Kerosene
Kerosene, the lamp fuel, bursts into flame when Ma pours it to make coffee. Billie Jo flings the burning pail out of the door just as her mother runs back towards the house.
Q 02In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo names her newborn baby brother after which American president?
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Roosevelt was the president whose New Deal offered farmers like her father a crop loan. Billie Jo gives the name at the burial, when the reverend asks what the baby should be called.
Q 03In Out of the Dust, Ma weeps over news of Canada's Dionne sisters, a famous 1934 set of what?
Quintuplets
Quintuplets were sensational news in 1934: five babies born at once to one mother in Canada. Ma, carrying a single child through a hungry summer, sheds a tear trying to imagine it.
Q 04In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo's father jokes that the dusty milk at dinner has turned into what?
Chocolate
Chocolate is his joke for the brown milk, just as the grit on the potatoes is pepper. Plates and glasses wait upside down on the table until the moment the food is served.
Q 05Which instrument, a wedding gift from her father to Ma, is Billie Jo's great talent in Out of the Dust?
Piano
Piano lessons from Ma began on Billie Jo's fifth birthday. By thirteen she is earning dimes playing with a local band in towns across the Panhandle.
Q 06Out of the Dust follows Billie Jo through the Dust Bowl years on a farm in which state's Panhandle?
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is home: the family farms in Cimarron County, at the far western end of the Panhandle, outside the fictional town of Joyce City. Neighbour after neighbour gives up and heads west.
Q 07Which American children's book prize, named after an English publisher, did Out of the Dust win?
Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal judges pick the most distinguished American children's book of the year. Karen Hesse's winner, published in 1997, tells its whole story in short dated poems.
Q 08In Out of the Dust, Mr. Noble and Mr. Romney bet on who can kill more of which crop-eating animals?
Rabbits
Rabbits ate what little the drought left, so the two farmers killed twenty each, then fell out over who had cheated. Billie Jo hates the contest, though the meat goes to hungry families.
Q 09How does Billie Jo travel when she runs away from home in the summer of 1935 in Out of the Dust?
In a freight boxcar
In a freight boxcar she rides west through desert heat and mountain cold. She carries only a few biscuits and the dimes Ma had saved for her.
Q 10In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo plays at a President's Birthday Ball, held to fight which disease?
Polio
Polio had paralysed the president himself, and the balls held on his birthday supported the Warm Springs centre in Georgia that he turned into a clinic. A year later Joyce City's dance raises thirty-three dollars.
Q 11Which crop does Billie Jo's father insist on planting in Out of the Dust, despite years of drought?
Wheat
Wheat had paid well in wetter years, so he rejects Ma's advice to switch to cotton or sorghum, which cope better with drought. He has grown it before, he says, and he will grow it again.
Q 12In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo's friend Livie Killian moves away with her family to which state?
California
California drew many families fleeing the dust in search of work. Livie later writes that neither of her parents has found any, and that her brother Reuben has gone off to fend for himself.
Q 13Which part of Billie Jo's body is badly burned as she tries to save her mother in Out of the Dust?
Hands
Q 21In Out of the Dust, which night-school teacher grows close to Billie Jo's widowed father?
Louise
Louise taught his night-school class and kept him company while Billie Jo was away. She wins Billie Jo over by listening well and by never trying to take Ma's place.
Q 22In which state does Billie Jo give up running away and turn for home in Out of the Dust?
Arizona
Arizona is where she climbs down, and a woman from a government agency gives her food and water. Days of travelling alone have taught her that a silent father is better than no one.
Q 23In Out of the Dust, Billie Jo plays through pain to take which place in a Palace Theatre contest?
Third
Third place earns her a dollar, and the applause makes her forget the pain. The young singer who beats her into second goes home with two dollars.
Hands that once made music are left scarred and painful after she beats out the flames on her mother's apron. For months afterwards it hurts too much to play.
Q 14Which young singer, Billie Jo's rival and later her crush in Out of the Dust, lands a radio job in Amarillo?
Mad Dog Craddock
Mad Dog Craddock owes his nickname to his father, who gave it to him because he bit everything as a small child. Neighbours crowd into the hardware store to hear him sing live on the radio.
Q 15Which poetic form did Karen Hesse choose for Out of the Dust, feeling that spare wording suited hard times?
Free verse
Free verse let her be as frugal with words as Dust Bowl families had to be with everything else. Each poem closes with a month and a year, so the book reads like Billie Jo's diary.
Q 16In Out of the Dust, which fruit grows on the two front-yard trees Ma has nursed through the drought?
Apple
Apple blossom covers both trees one May despite the dust, and Billie Jo dreams of pies and dumplings. Her father grumbles that they drink more water than anything else on the farm.
Q 17What does Billie Jo's father spend months digging near the house in Out of the Dust, as Ma had once urged?
A pond
A pond was Ma's idea for catching water, one he argued against while she lived. Once it is finished he plans to stock it with catfish for the frying pan.
Q 18In Out of the Dust, which flowers did Billie Jo's father see on soldiers' graves in wartime France?
Poppies
Poppies grew bright along the trail of the fighting, one of the few things her father will say about his time in the Great War. Billie Jo wishes they could push up through the dust at home.
Q 19In Out of the Dust, why did her father pick the name Billie Jo for his newborn daughter?
He wanted a son
He wanted a son, and he raises Billie Jo to handle any job on the farm, even driving the tractor. Years of hoping for a second child pass before Ma announces another baby.
Q 20Which swarming insects strip the fruit from Ma's two trees on the day she dies in Out of the Dust?
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers descend while Billie Jo is outside fetching water, and they devour every plant on the farm however hard she fights them. She never gets the chance to tell her mother.
Q 24In Out of the Dust, where in Joyce City does Buddy Williams's homeless family shelter for several weeks?
The schoolhouse
The schoolhouse becomes their home, and the pupils bring in food while the father mends things around the building. They drive on west two weeks after his wife gives birth there.
Q 25In Out of the Dust, a hungry stranger steals Billie Jo's biscuits as she sleeps and leaves what in exchange?
A family photo
A family photo of his wife and three boys is all the man owns, and his Kansas address is written on the back. Billie Jo decides to post it so his wife will know he is still alive.
Q 26In Out of the Dust, spots on Billie Jo's father's face raise fears of which illness that killed his father?
Skin cancer
Skin cancer is the fear, and for months he ignores the spots as though he had given up. Once Billie Jo is home he lets Doc Rice cut the growths away, and is scolded for waiting so long.
Q 27Which Christmas dish of Ma's does Billie Jo wish she had learned to cook in Out of the Dust?
Cranberry sauce
Cranberry sauce was her father's favourite, but Ma never showed her how it was made. Billie Jo cooks their first Christmas dinner as a pair without it.
Q 28What is the first name of Billie Jo's father, the stubborn farmer at the heart of Out of the Dust?
Bayard
Bayard fought in France in the First World War before coming home to farm the Panhandle. He says little about the war, and after Ma's death he says little about anything.
Q 29In Out of the Dust, what does Sheriff Robertson seize from two moonshiners and hand over to the school?
Sugar
Sugar was what the two men needed for their still, and instead of carting it away the sheriff gives it to the school, where the teacher turns it into sweets for the children.
Q 30What is the name of Arley Wanderdale's band, which Billie Jo joins on the road in Out of the Dust?
Black Mesa Boys
The Black Mesa Boys share their name with the flat-topped landmark in Cimarron County that is the highest point in the state. Ma agrees for the summer only, with Arley's wife Vera along to keep an eye on Billie Jo.