The Higher Power of Lucky

Lucky isn’t. That is, Lucky has not had much luck. Her mother died. Her father never wanted a child. Her guardian is Brigitte, her father’s ex-wife sent from France to take care of Lucky, and Lucky fears Brigitte is tired of caring for her. Lucky senses her life needs more and she finds some comfort by listening in to sad stories told by members of an AA group, though she cannot seem to find her own higher power.

A young neighbor boy, Miles, lives with his grandmother, but spends most of his time with Lucky. Miles learns that his mother is in jail and decides to run away. At the same time, Lucky, decides to run away. They spend a terrible night in the desert but decide to return to their lives and face the truths there.

Initially, I didn’t find much to distinguish this story from hundreds of others of sad stories about unhappy children. But it has stayed with me and I’ve found myself continuing to think about the story. A good sign.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

In light of the controversy surrounding this Newbery pick of 2007, I'd like to add this subtitle: "The Curious Incident of the Dog with the Scrotum Bite." A story about a girl named Lucky living in the desert of California, and how she deals with growing up, losing her mother, knowing her father does not want her, and worrying that her guardian is going to leave her and move to Paris, gets overshadowed by the reference on page one of a dog's scrotum bitten by a rattlesnake. I have to admit, the first page caught me off guard, but more so because of the story surrounding the tragic (though insignificant) snake bite. I completely agree with Kristen McLean of Pixie Stix Kids Pix:

"I can’t help but notice with amusement that no one has objected to another passage in the first chapter of the book that involves a man “who had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked ‘62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat…” Apparently rum, drunkenness, and poor taste in automobiles have nothing on scrotums when it comes to getting people in a moral outrage. (I can’t criticize the Johnny Cash. I love Johnny Cash.)"

I did wonder exactly what audience she was trying to reach. As a self-proclaimed quirkophile, I thought I would enjoy the quirkiness of the characters, but I found myself switching from the audio book to the radio a lot and waiting anxiously for the story to end. In a possible defense of the book, when I listen to books in the car, it is very fragmented. I have four kids who go to three different schools, and I do daycare a few times a week for kids who go to yet another school. So the story gets broken up into about six or seven five-minute segments throughout the day. I can't help but wonder if I would have appreciated it more if I had sat down and read it all at once. As far as children, I have no idea if it would hold their attention at all. My 11-year-old son, who only heard bits and pieces, just described it as "weird," but I think that was after hearing about how Lucky puts mineral oil on her eyebrows to make them "glisten."
Overall, I just wasn't that impressed, and although I'm not quite in agreement with the author: “The word is just so delicious. The sound of the word to Lucky is so evocative. It’s one of those words that’s so interesting because of the sound of the word,” the scrotum and the controversy were the only exciting aspects of this children's novel.

P.S.-Sorry if the text is annoying--this is the way I do it on my blog, and I just copied it from there and was too lazy to resize the phrases!

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

Cross-posted at The Well-Read Child

With this year’s Newbery winner being announced on Monday, I figured I’d better get around to reading last year’s winner.

The Higher Power of Lucky is set in Hard Pan, California, a destitute town where nearly everyone receives “Government Surplus commodities.” Even though the town may be lacking in money, it’s not lacking in interesting and eclectic people. First you have Short Sammy, a recovering alcoholic whose house is made of a water tank. Then there’s quiet Lincoln, Lucky’s friend who is fascinated with tying knots. His mother a librarian wants him to be president, and his father, a much older man spends his day driving around in a dune buggy looking for historic pieces of barbed wire he can sell on EBay. And then there’s Lucky Trimble a 10 year old girl whose mother was electrocuted by down power lines when she was eight. Her father, whom Lucky doesn’t even know wasn’t about to become a father when her mother died, so he somehow managed to get his first wife, Brigitte, to come all the way from France to be Lucky’s guardian. Lucky is consumed with the fear that Brigitte will go back to France and leave her. The book centers around this as we get a glimpse into Lucky’s everyday life and the people of Hard Pan.

When I first read this book, I thought, “THIS won the Newbery Medal?” I thought it was a good story, but I didn’t think it one of the best young adult books I’d ever read and certainly not as good as Hattie Big Sky, which was named a Newbery Honor Book last year.

But as I kept thinking about the story and the characters, it grew on me. Patron does an exceptional job with characterization in the book. Lucky is exceptionally smart and creative. She loves to make up stories about the “Olden Days” where her companions, HMS Beagle (her real-life dog who is “not a ship or a beagle”) and Chesterfield, a mule, have all kinds of adventures. For a child of ten, she has had to deal with things that no adult would want to go through—the death of her mother and the abandonment of her father. These experiences give her a sense of maturity that many 10-year-olds don’t have, but Patron reminds us over and over again that she is a child. She carries around a “survival backpack” wherever she goes. Its contents include a survival blanket, half a tube of toothpaste, a bottle of Gatorade, tins for collecting her bug specimens, and much more. She puts mineral oil on her eyebrows so they’ll glisten (Brigitte won’t let her wear real makeup), and she has a bit of a crush on Lincoln. She eavesdrops on AA meetings and other “anonymous meetings,” and it’s apparent that she doesn’t understand what they’re really all about as she tries to search for her own “Higher Power.” These types of things made me chuckle and then I’d come across a passage like this that would tug at my heart: “Sometimes Lucky wanted to change everything, all the bad things that had happened, and sometimes she wanted everything to stay the same forever,” (p. 8).

Patron gives us a glimpse into what it feels like to live in constant fear that you’re going to be abandoned and not know where you’re going end up—the fear that is all too real for most foster children. Even little Miles, who lives with his grandmother, doesn’t know where his mother is and carries around a worn copy of “Are You My Mother?” I couldn’t help feeling empathy for him as Lucky refused to read it to him—again.

Even with all of the heart wrenching moments, Patron does a fine job of balancing them with humor and an engaging storyline. The book is not too heavy or depressing and has an uplifting ending.

I was surprised (well not really) to hear all of the hubbub about Patron’s use of the word “scrotum” on the very first page of the book—she’s retelling Short Sammy’s story of his lowest point with his alcoholism where his dog gets bit on the scrotum by a snake. There is nothing sexual or perverse, and in fact, Lucky is not even sure what a scrotum is—another example that she is just a child. My two cents—children have heard much far worse, and it is the proper name of a sexual organ. Patron could have used a number of alternative terms. It is not and should not be a focal point of the book, and the fact that it has been banned is completely ridiculous. But don’t get me started on what I think about censorship…even I am making this is the focal point of my review.

The Higher Power of Lucky is a good book with lovable characters, great and believable dialogue, and both poignant and funny moments. I personally would have picked Hattie Big Sky to win, but I’m not on the committee, so what can I do?

Correction: My sources were incorrect...The Higher Power of Lucky hasn't been banned although there was a lot of chatter about it being challenged or banned. Even so, I STILL think it's ridiculous that it would even be considered. Thanks to Susan at Wizards Wireless for setting me straight and pointing me to this article.

The Higher Power of Lucky

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
Illustrated by Matt Phelan


Pages: 134
Finished: Dec. 21, 2007
First Published: 2006
Rating: 2.5/5

First Sentence:

Lucky Trimble crouched in a wedge of shade behind the Dumpster.

Comments: 10-year-old Lucky lives in a rural town with a population of 43. She is constantly worried that her Guardian will leave her and go back to live in France. This book left me greatly underwhelmed. I had no great liking for the characters and the plot was mostly uneventful. Disappointing for a Newbery winner.

The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron

This post, written back in June, is taken from my blog, Alone on a Limb.

_____

I finally got around to reading the notorious Newbery Award winning book of the year, The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron. As the whole world now knows, that little book mentions the scrotum of a dog on its first page. SHOCK! AWE! KABOOM! A dog is bitten by a snake... there!

Lucky Trimble crouched in a wedge of shade behind the Dumpster. Her ear near a hole in the paint-chipped wall of Hard Pan's Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, she listened as Short Sammy told the story of how he hit rock bottom. How he quit drinking and found his Higher Power. Short Sammy's story, of all the rock-bottom stories Lucky had heard at twelve-step anonymous meetings -- alcoholics, gamblers, smokers, and overeaters -- was still her favorite.

Sammy told of the day when he had drunk half a gallon of rum listening to Johnny Cash all morning in his parked '62 Cadillac, then fallen out of the car when he saw a rattlesnake on the passenger seat biting his dog, Roy, on the scrotum.

Give me a break! Children are confronted daily with seamy sex and vicious violence in nauseating "reality" shows, movies, the news, commercials,"family" sit-coms... Our society is soaked in the unseemly of all sortssssssssssssssss.

And somebody is all in a tizzy because an author uses the correct term for a reproductive organ of a dog in a kid's book!

I teach fourth grade science. I admit that I feel more apprehension than I show when a young student asks about a linked pair of insects: "Look at those dragonflies, Mr. Shaw, what are they doing?" But I try to handle it like an adult. (And it's easier now than it was in 1969 - the year I began teaching.) I try hard to be absolutely matter-of-fact when I reply, "They are mating. That's how they reproduce. You'll see lot's of those animals mating this time of year. The females will be laying their eggs soon. Their life cycle is a little different from the monarch butterflies we studied..."

I think Patron did a beautiful job of handling the topic with Lucky. Are there still parents and teachers of nine- and ten-year-olds in this sex-soaked society who pretend reproduction - even in animals - either doesn't exist, or is unmentionable?

The Higher Power of Lucky is a good little book. It is not on my list of must-reads, but I have no problem at all recommending it to a fourth-grader.

Lordy-mercy, that poor dog!

____
A November note:

Several months later I have to say I may decide to move this book up a bit on my mental list of recommended books. Patron's characters have imposed themselves on my consciousness many times since June. I like Lucky, Brigette, and Lincoln and I believe many of my students will.

The Higher Power of Lucky - 3M's Review

The Higher Power of Lucky
by Susan Patron

2006, 134 pp.

Newbery Medal

Rating: 4




This book created a little controversy when it won the Newbery Medal because it contains the word 'scrotum' in relation to a snake bite on a dog. I'm almost conservative as they come, and I don't see what the big deal is. I really liked this book and found it to be very charming.

Lucky is a girl whose mother has died and who lives with a Frenchwoman. They live in the desert of California in a very small (population 43) community. Also in her life besides her French guardian Brigitte are Miles, a cute little boy whose favorite book is Are You My Mother?, and Lincoln, a boy her age who is obsessed with knot tying.

These relationships and the longings of this little girl form the heart of the novel. I really cared about these characters and found myself rooting for all of them.

The Higher Power of Lucky: Dewey's Review

Cross-posted at my blog.

I read The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron and Matt Phelan for the Newbery Challenge and the Book Awards Reading Challenge. I really enjoyed this novel, which is intended for an audience of children from ages nine to eleven.

Lucky is a spirited ten year old girl who lives in an impoverished small town in the Mojave desert. The conflict she faces was a bit simplistic for me; like a bad TV sitcom conflict, it arises out of a misunderstanding that could easily be cleared up with some simple communication. But I'm not ten years old, and maybe kids of this age could use a book that teaches them to just ask when they're confused.

SPOILER WARNING: Lucky's dad has never been a part of her life, and her mother died two years ago. When that happened, her dad, whom she didn't even recognize, convinced his ex-wife from before his marriage to Lucky's mom to come and take care of Lucky. Lucky believes that this is a temporary arrangement until she can be put in a foster home, but she's grown attached to her guardian, Brigitte, and understandably isn't ready to face losing another adult she cares about. She sees Brigitte's passport out and assumes Brigitte is going home to France without her. So Lucky runs away from home, hoping that Brigitte will miss her so much that she realizes she should stay with Lucky. As it turns out, Brigitte only has her passport out as a form of ID for a hearing to adopt Lucky permanently.

Many children's books present a false view of the world in which children have no contact with difficult situations, or with the adult world. I think that this sort of approach in children's literature gives children a strange sense that the rest of the world is safer and saner and simpler, more ethical and straightforward than their own life experiences. This gives them a feeling that there's something wrong with them and the people they know in real life.

In this book, however, Lucky eavesdrops on AA meetings and hears a lot of confusing things she doesn't understand. She has to try to come to terms with the fact that her father has simply never wanted kids and isn't about to start wanting kids now just because she has no other parent to take care of her. She wrestles with the cultural differences between her and her French guardian. She's also entirely aware that everyone in her town is poor, and that the free government food they get is of a low quality.

I think that many children reading this book will feel relief to know that even kids in books face challenges they don't really understand. I also think many children will miss some of the references to adult situations (such as twelve step programs) but they will recognize that Lucky doesn't understand either, and that will reassure them that it's natural for kids to encounter aspects of the adult world they can't make sense of.

The fact that Lucky's mother has died will be especially reassuring to kids who have had enormous losses in their own lives and are tired of reading about kids in perfect little worlds where everything is always just fine.

There was a big hullabaloo about the fact that this book contains the word "scrotum." This word, which Lucky overhears but doesn't know the meaning of, is just one more thing Lucky doesn't understand. Personally, I'm surprised that people could worry that the word scrotum might traumatize children while it's more likely a child reading this book would be shocked by the idea that hey, their mom could die in an electrocution accident, too, just any old time, right out of the blue.

One prude objector said: “You won’t find men’s genitalia in quality literature.”

Um, it's a dog's genitals mentioned in the book this objector so obviously didn't read. Every kid who has a dog sees their dog's scrotum all the time. Maybe we should start requiring dogs to wear pants in public. And they should keep their tails tucked into their dogpants, because tails are also a dog body part mentioned in this book.

But as for men's genitalia, half the kids reading this book carry around scrota attached to their bodies every day. They've probably noticed such things exist by now. As for the girls, maybe this book will initiate a birds-and-bees discussion with their parents when they go ask what "scrotum" means like Lucky did. They are theoretically nine to eleven, definitely of an age to wonder how babies are made. Or even be menstruating themselves. I would prefer that menstruating pre-teen girls know what scrota are for, so they can avoid them, but maybe that's just me.

All in all, I highly recommend this book, but don't take my word for it; take the American Library Association's recommendation. They awarded the 2007 Newbery Medal to this book.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron – 2007

In my opinion this is a profound book as themes and threads are intertwined at many levels. On the surface there is adventure, detail and day to day life from a child’s point of view. Look further and we find a myriad of issues such as the loss of a parent, friendships, finding the ‘higher power’, coping with a desolate and dusty life style not to mention that the characters are each grappling with growing up. Through the story we witness the children supporting one another and we are often reminded of the challenges children face.

What is so delightful is the very way in which the author reasons like a child and gives voice to the fears and anxieties that we may well recognise from our own childhoods. For those of us who work with children it is very true to life - their fears, their sometimes simplistic views, uncluttered, reasoning that sounds quite straight forward. The characters are life like and well painted and provide humour. I especially liked Brigitte as she clearly attempts to speak English, despite her French nationality. Then there is Lincoln who ties knots incessantly. People think he is clueless but as Lucky tells him ‘..but you’re really not’. One such knot, a Ten Strand Round Knot was a gift to her. From that knot she wishes that she too could bring together all the complicated strands in her life and so weave it all into a beautiful neat ten strand knot. This is a delightful image of learning from someone whom others see as ‘clueless’. This is a very short read but it prompted many reflective moments that would be a joy to share with a young reader.

2007 ~ The Higher Power of Lucky ~ by Susan Patron

I frequently read YA and children's books, but I haven't reviewed any here. It changes with this one, which I discovered when I read 3M's review of this 134-page book for children 9 to 12. From the dustjacket:

Lucky, age ten, can't wait another day. The meanness gland in her heart and the crevices full of questions in her brain make running away from Hard Pan, California (population 43), the rock-bottom only choice she has.

It's all Brigitte's fault -- for wanting to go back to France. Guardians are supposed to stay put and look after girls in their care! Instead Lucky is sure that she'll be abandoned to some orphanage in Los Angeles where her beloved dog, HMS Beagle, won't be allowed. She'll have to lose her friends Miles, who lives on cookies, and Lincoln, future U.S. president (maybe) and member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers. Just as bad, she'll have to give up eavesdropping on twelve-step anonymous programs where the interesting talk is all about Higher Powers. Lucky needs her own -- and quick.

But she hadn't planned on a dust storm, Or needing to lug the world's heaviest survival-kit backpack into the desert.

How can anyone resist such a story? I didn't have any books like this to read in 1950 when I was ten! It's a great book for children, but I also recommend The Higher Power of Lucky to moms and grandmothers, too, so we can remember what it's like to be ten years old. That's old enough to know all kinds of things, but not quite mature enough to understand them. And why is Lucky wearing a flowing red dress on the book's cover and carrying an urn?

Her friend Lincoln is a nerd and a word-person, as I have been since at least the age of two. Let me give you an example: Lincoln was so annoyed by a sign that said SLOW CHILDREN AT PLAY, that he had to "fix" it. He didn't want people to think that the children around there, including Lucky and himself, were SLOW, so........

Lincoln did something brilliant. Next to SLOW, he drew two neat perfect-size dots, one like a period and the other a little above it. Lucky knew it was a colon and it made the sign mean, "You must drive slow. There are children at play" (p. 24).

For readers who are as brilliant and "presidential" as Lincoln, the author adds a page at the end of the book showing which books are mentioned in Lucky's story, how to reach the website for the International Guild of Knot Tyers, and the little prayer Lucky hears at the twelve-step meetings:

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
Courage to change the things we can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Now THIS is a real booklover's kind of book! No wonder it won the John Newbery Medal. Rated: 9/10, an excellent book.

More Lucky

I just loved this story. I liked the characters, I liked the descriptions of everyday life (government cheese! Mint Milanos!), and I really liked the details about the community and the surrounding desert - chukars, rattlesnakes, red racers (in the dryer - what a wonderful and horrifying detail), burros, and tarantulas. It was especially fun to read this right after Holes, which also took place in the desert. Despite the snakes and tarantulas, though, Lucky's desert is an altogether friendlier place than Stanley Yelnats's - partially because it is clear that the author loves the desert, and partially because Lucky is quite the naturalist.

Since I have a ten year old that collects bugs like Lucky does (not even hesitating to pick up spiders with his bare hands), I really appreciated the details of Lucky's "museum". Her report on the tarantula hawk wasp sounds very much like something my son would write. Patron just got the tone and the kids' varied interests right, just like she did with the government cheese.

Her description of minor characters is just as appealing:

Lincoln's father was an Older Dad with a pension - he was twenty-three years older than Lincoln's mom - and looked more like a grandfather than a father. He drove around the desert in his homemade dune buggy searching for historic pieces of barbed wire, and then he sold them on eBay.

And Lucky's house - her 'canned-ham' trailer, and the two other trailers linked to it, "shaped and soldered...so not even a mouse would be able to find a crack or opening anywhere" is simply the coolest house for a kid to live in since the windmill in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

I wrote down some of my favorite passages while we were waiting to see the pediatrician yesterday. I had to stop before the doctor came in, because I started running out of paper and I just kept finding new quotes that I liked even more than the stuff I had already written:

"It is wrong to have snakes in dryers! This is not something that would ever happen in France. California is not a civilized country!" (p. 54)

Short Sammy had gone back to frown at the block of cheese on his table. "The only thing left, man, is to fry this thing in bacon grease," he said. (p. 61)

Mothers have their good sides, their bad sides, and their wacky sides, but Lucky figured Lincoln's mother had no way of knowing at the time he was born that he would turn out to be so dedicated about knots. (p. 63)

Never before had Lucky realized that Lincoln's knot-tying brain secretions gave him such a special way of seeing. (p. 68)

All in all, I'm glad "scrotum" is bringing this to a wider audience, and I'm fairly certain that my kids will like this story as much as I did. I'm not sure that I love the cover illustration, though I did like many of the little drawings in the book itself. I just realized what is happening on the cover (a day after finishing the book) though, and it makes the cover a bit more poignant and fitting, knowing what is happening there.

The Higher Power of Lucky

Everyone's weighed in on the whole scrotum debate. So, I'm not going to go there.

What did I think of this book by Susan Patron? Well, not much at first. It's a quiet little book. (Really little -- it's only 134 pages.) But the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. It's not a book that makes you shout: "Wahoo! This is the best book EVER!" It's more a book that as you mull it over, you find yourself smiling about. Like Miles, the five year old who's always mooching cookies, except he doesn't really mooch, because Lucky told him he was a mooch so now he tries to trade things (like allowing Dot to wash his hair) for cookies. But people end up just giving him the cookies anyway. Or Lincoln Clinton Carter Kennedy, who's mom wants him to grow up to be president, but who just wants to tie knots and get to the International Knot Tiers convention in England.

And then there's Lucky. I think Patron really got an aspect of being ten here. Lucky's not quite a child, but then she's not quite grown up. She wants to find her Higher Power, because she wants to have some sort of control in her life. And she feels powerless right now. I think there's a lot of 10 year olds who feel that way.

Nothing really major happens in the book. It didn't make me laugh out loud. It didn't make me cry. But, you know, it's a good book.

Susan Patron's Response to Controversy

The American Library Association's Newsletter, like the front page of the New York Times, and many other news sources devoted some space to The Higher Power of Lucky. They directed readers to the author's discussion of her work and "the" word causing all of the trouble. The article is from the Los Angeles Times. The first time I clicked, I was directed to the article. When I went back, I had to do a free registration. I loved her explanation.

Article: 'Scrotum' as a children's literary tool

We have ordered the book, and it cannot get here soon enough to suit me!
Flusi

Higher Power of Lucky

I thought you all might be interested in the American Library Association response to the commotion over the book Higher Power of Lucky.

Here is the link:
Statement regarding the true value of "Higher Power of Lucky"

Flusi

Newbery Controversy

Have you gals heard about this controversy surrounding The Higher Power of Lucky? Thoughts?

The Higher Power of Lucky

I just now finished reading the newly awarded Newberry Award winner for 2007, The Higher Power of Lucky.

It's about a girl whose mother has died. Electrocuted after a storm in the desert. Brigitte, Lucky's father's first wife, comes to all the way to California from France to take care of Lucky. All goes well until one day Lucky notices that Brigittes' suitcase is packed. Lucky is afraid Brigitte is going to move back to France and leave her at an orphanage in L.A. So Lucky decides to run away. She decides that the best, most perfect day to run away is the day there is a terrible windstorm in Hard Pan, California.

I'm not sure what to think of this book. I did enjoy it. It was beautifully written. The illustrations were wonderful. It made me cry a little at the end. But was it Newberry Medal good? I don't know. I think I need to brew on that for awhile.

Have you read it yet? If so, what did you think?
Cross Posted at Blatherskite.