# Karen Hesse — books assigned in US schools

**2** books by Karen Hesse appear in the US-school assigned-reading canon. Sourced from state ELA standards, AP/IB syllabi, and Common Core exemplar lists.

**Lexile range:** 740L–740L
**Grade span:** 3–8
**Canonical URL:** https://readinglist.school/author/karen-hesse
**License:** [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) — please credit ReadingList.school when citing.

## Recurring themes

- Dust Bowl
- Great Depression
- cats
- grief and loss
- jews
- mother-daughter relationship
- persecutions
- rural Oklahoma
- sisters
- verse narrative

## Genres

- Historical Fiction
- Middle Grade Verse Novel / Historical Fiction

## Every Karen Hesse title on file

- [Out of the Dust](https://readinglist.school/book/out-of-the-dust) _(740L · Grades 5–8 · 1997)_
- [The Cats in Krasinski Square](https://readinglist.school/book/the-cats-in-krasinski-square) _(Grades 3–8 · 2004)_

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_Generated from primary-source citations indexed on ReadingList.school. JSON API: https://readinglist.school/api/author/karen-hesse · HTML view: https://readinglist.school/author/karen-hesse._