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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.
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- ISBN13: 9781416901945- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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By CCGal (USA)
This book includes a well written storyline, deep characters, and a world that most children haven't been a part of. Join Lucky in her journey to find her Higher Power and change her life into something more secure and permanent. Harkens to the same emotional troubles in "The Great Gilly Hopkins" without all of the negative aspects and controversy. An excellent read for grades 5+
By S. Silverman (California)
Lucky is the main character and storyteller. She lives in the poor sticks of the California desert. Her mother has died and her father doesn't want to care for a youngster, so Lucky is tended to by her father's second wife, a woman from France. Lucky is engaging, and a very pleasant blend of age-appropriate realism and fantasy life. Her friends are limited by the very small, rather isolated place where she lives, but they're well made. Lucky eavesdrops on various local recovery meetings, where she works to do basic maintenance, and overhears enough to want to find and incorporate the Higher Power that so many of the recovering adults attribute their healing to. Her pursuit is idealistic but pretty persistent. She applies the somewhat shaky logic of an adolescent and becomes a well-rounded, likable young lady. I think any intermediate grades student would enjoy it. I did and will heartily recommend it to those young readers I know.
By R. Smith (Maryland, USA)
I wanted so much to like this one, but felt it just didn't deliver. Some solid themes and characters were in place but -- dare I say it in the face of a Newbery award -- the writing was simply not that interesting. Overall the work was OK, but I felt it fell well short of the bar set by other winners.
By Carrie LaGree (Albany, NY)
I absolutely loved The Higher Power of Lucky and found it remarkably engaging. Patron did an incredible job of seeing the world through the eyes of a ten-year-old, being true to Lucky's view of the world as our narrator, but still allows readers to have a sense of Lucky's world of which she is not yet aware.
The Higher Power of Lucky has gotten a lot of controversy and press regarding its use of the word scrotum, and I read it for my children's literature class as one of the banned books. I'm sure it comes as no surprise to those who know me that I think banning this book is ludicrous. The scrotum is a basic part of human, and in this case, animal, anatomy. I strongly believe in teaching children proper terms for anatomy and ensuring a free flow of information. It is incredibly ironic that Lucky's confusion over the word caused an uproar. By the book's end, she asks Brigitte what the word actually means. To me, this detail provides a beautiful metaphor for how children view the world. Lucky overheard the word in a setting her caretaker couldn't imagine; children are exposed to words in a myriad of ways. Both literature and trusted adults are valuable ways to disseminate accurate information to children to counteract the inaccuracies or incompleteness of information they are often exposed to elsewhere.
There is a sequel, Lucky Breaks, that picks up the now eleven-years-old Lucky, and I'm looking forward to reading it.
By Molly Grue (SF Bay Area, CA USA)
The Higher Power of Lucky is about ten year old girl living in a remote desert town in California. Lucky's divorced mother died in a freak accident and her father never wanted children, so Lucky lives with her guardian, a French woman named Brigitte. When his second ex-wife died, Lucky's father asked his first ex-wife, Brigitte, to move to the Mojave Desert and assume guardianship of his eight year old daughter---a girl she had never met, and had no biological or emotional ties to. Oddly enough, Brigitte, who seems to have had no life until she received her ex-husband's call, immediately flew to this godforsaken spot and has taken care of Lucky ever since, with the help of support checks and government surplus food.
The tiny town itself, which is either populated by profoundly dysfunctional people or draws them from every surrounding community, hosts an astonishing number of Twelve Step meetings for every imaginable addiction. Lucky, who is paid to sweep up the trash after the meetings, eavesdrops on the Anonymous people, and wishes she had a Higher Power to help with her difficulties.
You see, despite the fact that Brigitte has devoted two years of her life to raising Lucky in this miserable hellhole, Lucky has suddenly become convinced that Brigitte means to abandon her---and (for some unfathomable reason) finds it impossible to ask her guardian whether this is true. Because if Lucky asked the question, the book would have no plot. Seriously.
And so the book is primarily about a ten year old girl eavesdropping, jumping to erroneous conclusions instead of asking simple questions, suffering from huge amounts of self-absorbed angst, and doing mean and dopey things---like breaking a five year old boy's heart, and wearing an oversized red silk dress when she decides to run away from home. In the middle of a dust storm. While carrying insect specimen bottles and a parsley grinder. Good grief!
The Higher Power of Lucky came to my attention first because it won the Newbery Medal and then because it was promptly banned from some library shelves because it contains the word "scrotum."
The word is a complete non-issue. It's a body part, it has a name, who cares? I don't!
The real issue is the target audience. Who is this book written for? I would not have enjoyed this book as a young child, and my son certainly didn't. The protagonist is not particularly childlike or appealing, and I can't imagine that many young people know enough about twelve step programs to make the framing device anything but incomprehensible.
The characters are poorly developed, particularly Brigitte, who is little more than a heavily accented enigma. Why would she leave Paris for Hard Pan to take care of her ex-husband's child from his second wife? Her choice might have made sense if she was fleeing from a sordid or painful past, but it's clear that she has a loving family back in Paris.
Worst of all, practically nothing happens during the course of the book. Lucky ruminates, briefly runs away, is discovered, and the book concludes. Sure, there is a climax of sorts near the end of her story, but the scene is so stagy and forced that I was shaking my head in disbelief. Hint: If a group of adults in motorized vehicles are searching the desert for a runaway, they are more likely to succeed if they scatter! Travelling in a caravan is utterly counterproductive, unless its members are secretly hoping to simultaneously arrive just as the protagonist experiences an emotional epiphany.
Towards the end of the book, my son kept sighing, "Isn't this book EVER going to end?"
It's short, so I wouldn't discourage anyone from reading this curiosity, but I wouldn't purchase a copy to keep, and I certainly wouldn't give it to a child as a gift.
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