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Gone with the Whirlwind

This is a book in the Language in Action series designed to develop listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. The story is about a tornado on the Great Plains of North America that picks up and destroys the house in which a girl named Hetty Jarvis lives.

Carr wrote inside a copy of this book that he sent to his nieces:

When I taught at Huron High School in 1938 I met the girl in this story (her real name was Nettie Cook). She then was an elderly woman. Only the part about her father being trapped by a falling staircase is not true. Even the dog tied to a wheel spoke and the plucked hen and the little swinger (all that remained of the doll) are true.

Lloyd 15 July 1980

Carr describes this event in a entry in Gidner's Brief Lives on Nettie Cook Dramsdahl.


(Last updated on 30/11/2020)



●  First edition


Author: Jim Carr

Year: June 1980

Project Director: Joyce M. Morris

Artist: Ken Evans

Publisher: Macmillan Education Ltd

ISBN: 0 333 28389 9

Size: 210 x 174 mm

Pages: 48 pp

Binding: printed card covers

Price: none stated

Printed in: Hong Kong

Notes: FOURWAYS, Book 8. The author is named as Jim Carr.

The introduction states:

This amazing story is based on what really happened to a girl who got caught up in a whirlwind. It shows that, although dreadful things can suddenly happen to people, all can end happily and, especially, if they care about what matters most.

There are copies of this book in the National Library of Wales and at Trinity College, Dublin, but not in the British Library.

An ISBN search lists this book as published by Nelson Thornes, which is incorrect.

Cover of book

Front cover