The story centers around siblings Alex and Kassie. They're apparently out of school because of some local wild fires, which is also keeping them indoors. In addition, the fires have been causing some line problems and their mom asks them to stay offline so she can have a clear connection for an online meeting she has to attend for work. They both complain about the inevitable boredom of not being online, and Kassie suggests playing a game. After dismissing all the others they've played to death, she pulls out one called The Great Depression Game. Almost as soon as they start playing, they find themselves transported back to 1929. In a sort of Jumanji-esque fashion, they have to play the game to its completion within the Depression itself in order to get back home.
The game consists of tasks that need to be completed in the game world, provided to our protagonists via cards that magically appear in their pockets. Some of the cards offer some historical context for when/where they are. (Time flows in a haphazard fashion, often jumping several years in a matter of seconds.) But the tasks they need to complete are generally vague and require some connection with the on-the-ground experiences to understand. It is largely this framework in which Alex and Kassie learn about the Great Depression from a more on-the-ground perspective.
They both wind up living (more like "surviving") from 1929 through 1941, having mostly separate adventures relative to the ages/genders. They finally find the 'key' and are transported back home. But rather than just get back online as their mother finishes her call, they go out to offer the firefighters water and snacks, putting the lessons of helpfulness and humanity they got from the Depression to good use.
The book feels strangely timely. The specific events and areas of focus from the book (Stout notes in the afterword that he had to leave a lot out due to space limitations) are largely unique to the 1930s, but it's hard not to see parallels with today. The solutions the kids use to accomplish their tasks remind me of efforts people are moving to today to divorce themselves from enshittified technology. Some of the massive mis-steps from President Hoover can be seen in echos from Trump. (Although Hoover's efforts seemed largely misguided, whereas Trump's are vindictive.) If this had come out any later, I'd have thought it was written directly as a response to current events, but with publishing lead times and such, I can't believe this wasn't started before the 2024 US elections even happened.
I'm unfamiliar with both Stout and Flood, but their work here is solid. While the stoty's conceit of having to live through a game is hard to mentally divorce from Jumanji, they handle it differently enough that The Great Depression doesn't feel like a re-hashed Jumanji. There's a time-travel element here, too, to potentially confuse readers -- on top of this trying to be educational -- and they keep everything pretty straight-forward and clear throughout the book. Which is saying a fair amount, I think, given the storytelling complexities they're dealing with here. Kudos to both Stout and Flood on that front.
The one element that bugged me a little was the time jumps within the game. From a storytelling perspective, the jumps themselves were all clear enough. But the first one is expressly noted to go from 1929 to 1932 and Kassie finds herself suddenly jumping from age 11 to age 14, which includes a growth spurt and forces her to find new clothes. (Or, more precisely, make new clothes out of an old potato sack.) This scene is handled well and all, but the problem is that that's the only time we see anything like that. Following the in-story logic, Kassie should be 22 at the end of the story, and Alex should be in his late 20s. But neither look any different. To be fair, Alex is never given an actual age, so if he were maybe 17 or 18 at the start, then he might not look appreciably different eleven years later, but Kassie should very much not look like she's still fourteen.
A bigger concern of mine is actually what isn't covered. As I noted, Stout does acknowledge that he had to skip a lot because of space limitations and he does provide a couple sentences on a half dozen areas he either skimmed past or didn't include at all. The one I think is a big miss, though, is the racial distinctions. There are only a few darker skinned characters shown in the background at all anywhere, and they seem to be presented on equal footing with their white counterparts. Nothing about any Asian or Native American groups. The version of the Depression that's presented is not a pleasant one, certainly, but it's a very Caucasian one.
This struck me for two reasons. In the first place, they do touch on gender-related differences, so there's some level of consideration there. Secondly, I think the Depression is a topic that gets at least some coverage in grade school so kids are already getting a Caucasian-focused version of events. Of all the other books that are in this line, I think World War II is the only other topic that's really covered in schools, so the vast majority of these books for a large portion of their audience are seeing/hearing this information for the first time. But with a topic they likely have at least heard something about, there's more opportunity to cover aspects that are in your seventh grade textbook. There is some of that here, I think, but I think how race played a factor would've been much more significant/noteworthy than the symbology used by kids who 'ride the rails.'
The story this book tells is well-done, make no mistake. My biggest gripe is almost more of a missed opportunity to do something more impactful. Race issues are clearly not a subject First Second hides from -- they've got a book on Claudette Colvin for Pete's sake! -- so I think presenting the Depression as either a whites-only problem or an everybody-got-impacted-equally problem (depending on how you want to read this) is a mis-step.
The Great Depression: From Hard Times to the New Deal came out in October from First Second and should be available through your favorite bookstore. It retails for $13.99 US in paperback and $21.99 US in hardcover.
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