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Dust Devil is listed as one of eight Notable Books of 2010.  See the attached PDF for the full announcement.

Tarnation! Seems like a mule's age since we've had a hero of American folklore worth wasting song and spit over, someone big enough to wear the boots of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill and John Henry, a giant who cuts canyons with his plow and seeds lakes with his tears.
Our long spell of waiting is over. Six years ago Anne Isaacs teamed up with Paul O. Zelinsky on "Swamp Angel," the story of Angelica Longrider, a red-haired girl from the hills of Tennessee who grew and grew and grew and grew to become the greatest woodswoman in the land. Born in 1815, when Tennessee was still unsettled, Angelica rescued a wagon train from the mists of Dejection Swamp when she was only 12. "Ever since that time," Isaacs wrote, "Angelica Long­rider has been known as Swamp Angel. To this day, stories about Swamp Angel spring up like sunflowers along the wagon trails. And every one of them is true."
True or not, the book won well-deserved praise, including a Caldecott Honor, for Isaacs' storytelling and Zelinsky's witty illustrations, done in an American primitive style on wood veneers.
Much of "Swamp Angel" chronicled Angelica's battle with a giant bear. Day and night they fought like Frazier and Ali, until the Angel finally got the best of the bear by snoring down a tree on top of him. She kept its pelt as a rug, but it was too big for Tennessee "so she moved to Montana and spread that bear rug out on the ground in front of her cabin," Isaacs wrote. "Nowadays, folks call it the Shortgrass Prairie."
In the motion picture business, folks, that's what they call a sequel tease.
Now the Isaacs-Zelinsky team is back with "Dust Devil," in which our heroine, who is all of 16 years old, finds herself setting up house on the Montana prairie. The flat land offers no shade, so Angel plucks a nearby mountain and plants it east of her ranch. Voilà: cool relief. "Pretty soon all her neighbors wanted a mountain," Isaacs writes. "So Angel grabbed an armful and planted mountains one by one on the ­prairie. ‘That's a beaut,' she'd say proudly every time she set one down. And to this day, every stand-alone peak in Montana is called a butte."
In "Dust Devil," 19th-century Montana is a land where hyperbole is common fact. The soil is "rich enough to open its own bank." One summer the corn shot up so fast the stalks lifted cows into the sky, and "it rained milk by the bucket." When a dust storm engulfs the land, Angel takes to rasslin' with it and discovers its cause: a giant white horse, "bucking and wheeling and neighing like fury!" Soon enough the horse, named Dust Devil, becomes her trusty sidekick, Babe the Blue Ox to her Paul Bunyan.
Every heroine needs a villain to foil, and Isaacs comes up with some dandies: Backward Bart and his gang of Flying Desperadoes, who ride through Montana "as fast as bad news," robbing and terrorizing everywhere they go. Bart grew up backward, so every time he speaks it sounds like, well, like something funny. "Cash your gimme!" he'd say at a stickup. "Up hurry!"
Bart and his gang give Zelinsky a chance to shine. There's Missouri Jerk, who resembles a mustache with a man attached; Lovely Poe, whose face looks like the bad end of a bar fight; Lawless Sam Diego, who looks like a loving homage to Quentin Blake's hirsute husband in "The Twits," by Roald Dahl; and the Stanford twins, By-Guess and By-Golly, who are peg-legged, eye-patched and just plain creepy.
Did I mention that Bart and the Desperadoes ride giant mosquitoes instead of horses? They do grow 'em big in Montana, you know.
Generations ago this kind of big-sky storytelling was an oral folk art. Tale-­spinners like Hathaway Jones, the Munchausen of Oregon's Rogue River country, helped people pass long evenings and laugh away hardship with tales of ridiculous deprivation: Cold? This is nothing. Heck, one winter it was so cold the water froze under the jumping salmon, left 'em stranded on hard ice. It was entertainment, succor and backhanded bragging, and Anne Isaacs has the style, the tone, the motifs and the humor absolutely nailed. It's as if the author discovered Angelica the Angel hidden away in some old folkways archive in the Smithsonian.
In the end, of course, the heroine saves the day through bravery, pluck and a clever ploy. In all the scuffling, Angel creates the Sawtooth Range and the geysers of Yellowstone, a couple of Montana-size instances of what an economist might call unintended consequences. Will there be a third installment? The portents are positive. When Angel knocked the teeth out of Bart and the Desperadoes, you see, their gold fillings "washed downstream, all the way to California," Isaacs writes. "Eventually settlers discovered those nuggets and started a stampede. But that's another story." Saddle up, boys! The lady's headed west.

Developed by Anne Isaacs, for use by educators, parents, and librarians.

General Note: Before any activity that follows, it is recommended that you read Swamp Angel and/or Dust Devil with the class, without interruptions. Have a general class conversation about the story (plot), and the qualities found in the characters. Ask leading questions to elicit comments. (eg. "How would you describe Backwards Bart? Is he someone you'd want at your birthday party? Why or why not?")

Challenge students to find connections from the story to their own lives. For example, has anyone moved from one place to another, as Angel does at the outset of Dust Devil? What kinds of things were different in the new region? What was hard to adjust to? Has anyone ridden a horse? Angel was too big for ordinary horses; what in your life is too big for you? too small?  How do you cope with things that ‘don't fit well'?

After reading and general discussion, feel free to try some of the math, science, or language arts ideas that follow. Have fun!

Isaacs and Zelinsky tell an even taller tale about Angelica Longrider, the outsized heroine of their hilarious, Caldecott Honor-winning Swamp Angel. Having outgrown Tennessee, Angel moves to roomy Montana, where she faces a wild dust-devil horse and a bandit named Backward Bart, born so ugly that his mother rolled him around backwards in his stroller. He walked, spoke and robbed backward ever since. Bart's garbled threats remain funny even after several readings. "Cash your gimme!" just doesn't get old. Side-splitting similes abound as well; Bart's nefarious cronies are "pricklier than porcupines in a cactus patch." Singsongy, colloquial narration guides readers from predicament to outlandish predicament with humor and folksy charm. Angel's antics, pictured in oval and rectangular panels and surrounded by rippling wood grains, neatly explain the topography of the West in traditional folk-story fashion (wrestling the bucking bronco, Angel's feet drag across the ground, creating the Grand Canyon). Zelinsky's rustic oil illustrations offer a gallery of comic faces, frozen in exaggerated surprise, shock and frustration. Artfully crude, comedic artwork, friendly, understated narration and a wildly hyperbolic story combine to create a new classic. (Picture book. 4-10)

Zelinsky and Isaacs pull out all the stops in this dazzling companion to Swamp Angel (Dutton, 1994). Angelica "Angel" Longrider, the "wildest wildcat in Tennessee," has moved to Montana, "a country so sizable even Angel could fit in." The West seems to suit the feisty heroine, but she has trouble finding a horse powerful enough to carry her until she wrestles a violent storm and Dust Devil emerges mythically out of the fray. Isaacs's text, rich in playful language and alliteration, never misses the opportunity to make the most of the tall-tale convention as the formidable duo embark on a series of action-packed adventures centered on vanquishing a band of backward-speaking bad guys. Zelinsky has a heyday masterfully illustrating the high jinks with his meticulous oil paintings on cedar, aspen, and maple veneers, all of which are elegantly encased by a thin red border. Using softly glowing tones, he brands his own version of a Western folk style to flawlessly render the big-sky setting. The variety of layouts such as ovals, strips, and spot art effectively propel the hilarious, multilayered plot forward while panoramic spreads breathtakingly showcase the story's most dramatic moments. Readers will chuckle over the absurdity of the giant mosquitoes ridden by nasty Bart and his gang and learn the origins of buttes, geysers, the Grand Canyon, and even the California gold rush. A stunning tour de force and a satisfying continuation of Angel's saga.

-Caroline Ward, The Ferguson Library, Stamford, CT

Children who know Angelica Longrider, the "wildest wildcat in Tennessee" in the Caldecott Honor Book

Swamp Angel (1994), will cheer her return in this sequel that sends the barefoot, bear-wrestling giant to

Montana. After rearranging a mountain or two, Angel feels settled in her new home. All she needs is a

horse powerful enough to support her Himalayan size, and she finds her answer when a dust storm hits in

the summer of 1835. Leaping onto the swirling funnel clouds of grime, she wrestles the storm until it

magically takes equine shape and becomes Dust Devil, her trusty sidekick, who arrives just in time to help

her take on a team of larger-than-life bandits, led by Backward Bart. Once again, Isaacs' story and

Zelinsky's oil-paint-on-wood artwork create a laugh-out-loud tall tale with folksy phrasing and slapstick

exaggeration. There are really two adventures in one here, which makes for a lengthy read-aloud, but

children will delight in the deadpan, old-West narration and every gleefully silly, expertly rendered visual

detail, from Bart's trusty steed (a saloon-sized mosquito) to Angel's full-branched pine-tree knitting

needles. A few pourqoui elements wrap up this handsomely designed, thoroughly entertaining stand-alone

sequel.

• Gillian Engberg

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. (Sept.)

Welcome back Swamp Angel! Pee-yip! In this long overdue sequel to the award winning classic, Swamp Angel, the larger than life size heroine has moved to Montana, where there would be enough space for her gigantic self. But when great storms blow up in her new territory, Swamp Angel rides a cloud of dust and tames her own mighty steed, Dust Devil. Soon after that, the Angel and her dusty sidekick are faced with the villain, Backward Bart and his gang. These bad guys ride giant mosquitoes, since no self-respecting horses would carry such ornery Desperadoes. Bad old Bart only speaks backwards, so there is a hoot of good read-aloud fun in Anne Isaacs’ word play. This imaginative tall tale just gets funnier as the good guys triumph. In the process, the Grand Canyon and all those geysers and buttes are the work of - you guessed it - none other than our heroine. As for the bad guys—they just might show up again—or at least the gold fillings from their teeth were last sighted headed for California. Did somebody mention the Gold Rush? Let’s hope we don’t have to wait as long for the next amazing saga of Swamp Angel. Without a doubt, this gifted team has produced the best picture book of the year! 5-9.