Customer Reviews

The Higher Power of Lucky (Thorndike Literacy Bridge Young Adult)

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought this book for my 8 and 11 year old boys. And then I bought more for presents for my friends' kids.

The idea that some librarians are choosing to keep this book off the shelves due to the use of the word "scrotum" right at the beginning of the book is more offensive than the word. Reality check: my boys have lots of words for that part of the anatomy, it's about time they read the proper word used in context of another boy saying it.

Surprisingly, if it is the "word" that stuns people, then they haven't read the book and thought about how stunning it is to consider a child (Lucky) listening in on a variety of 12-step groups. But those two aspects, and all the rest of the "shocking" things that happen in this book, are all absolutely appropriate, and beautifully written, to make this book something special.

I highly recommend "Lucky", and I fully agree with the age suggestion assigned it (9-12). My 8yo thought it was awesome, but then, he is in the 4th grade. My 11yo loved it.

The reality is kids in this age range have all kinds of scary ideas and powerful curiosities. Being able to read about Lucky going through such things gave my kids the opportunity to think about and talk about all kinds of things. As a family, we thought this was an excellent book.

As for the librarians and teachers who think they don't want to have to give a vocabulary lesson on the word scrotum, ask them how many times they have heard boys in the 9-12 age range yell a variety of less savory words for that part of their anatomy. The scientifically correct word is always worth teaching.

Read it for yourself, and see.

Lucky has not had it, well, lucky. Her father has abandoned her, her mother died in the desert, and she lives in a tiny dusty town of 43 residents.

Lucky's town, Hard Pan, doesn't have much going for it. There's an improvised beauty salon, a post office, and the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center. Lucky cleans up the Visitor Center, and spends her time eavesdropping on the Anonymous meetings (smokers, drinkers, overeaters, and gamblers). She likes their stories and she's especially inspired by their search for the Higher Power. If only she, Lucky, could find the Higher Power. Then she could stabilize her life.

At the moment, Lucky doesn't feel that stable. She lives with her guardian, Brigitte, a Frenchwoman and Lucky's father's first wife. Brigitte is homesick, still speaks to Lucky with French terms of endearment, and, most importantly, has kept her passport. Lucky knows what that means: Brigitte will leave her in Hard Pan and head back to France.

Brigitte and Lucky live in an improvised home, comprised of three trailers linked together and mounted on concrete blocks. She has one friend in town, a knot-fantatic named Lincoln, and is followed around by a sad 5-year-old boy named Miles with a penchant for cookies and "Are You My Mother?"

Lucky resolves to follow the twelve step program, embarking on the "next step after rock bottom, the getting-control-of-your-life step." She decides to run away during a dust storm, taking a survival pack of her own design with her. Better leave than be left.

"The Higher Power of Lucky" is a charming, powerful tale for the younger Middle Grade reader (7-11). Susan Patron uses the Anonymous metaphor to good effect here. As Lucky herself explains, "It's almost impossible to get control of your life when you're only ten. It's other people, adults, who have control of your life, because they can abandon you." Isn't that the truth?

Lucky is a scrappy young protagonist and a straightforward narrator. She's also an intelligent girl, interested in biology and Charles Darwin, and means well in her search for the truth. The reader roots for her in her attempt to take control of her life, even when she makes mistakes, and is thrilled when she finally finds home.

Boy, a lot of people need to quit clutching their pearls in horror and just get over it. To dismiss a book entirely because of a word (and the CORRECT word at that, not a crude euphemism) is ludicrous; one wonders what would have happen if the slang equivalent had been used. There's a lot more to this book than the "s" word. The opening of the book establishes that this story takes place in a plain-spoken town in the real world. Unfortunately, the controversy over the word has overshadowed this bittersweet tale.

There is a silver lining to the controversy: nothing is more tempting than forbidden fruit. Those who may not have considered reading this book will be sure to seek it out, and many will then end up reading a story they enjoy. I'll bet they won't even think much about the "word" once they get into it.

I enjoyed reading about Lucky's world: the hard, dusty life in a remote California town, and the people who populate it. My favorite character was Miles, a five year old boy with a penchant for cookies and a certain picture book that, in the end, proves to be a much more poignant choice of a book than it first appears. But that's the joy of this book: even in such a relatively small book, all the characters, even those who only appear briefly, are multi-layered people with their own history. That's good writing.

Susan Patron (a librarian herself) has written a good book. Just read it and enjoy it. As for the rest, just let it go.

In the dusty California town of Hard Pan, Lucky is searching desperately for something to believe in, her Higher Power. Having lost her mother in a horrifying accident, Lucky is now raised by her "guardian" Brigitte, as her father was not up for the job. Lucky fears that Brigitte (Bree-JEET, not BRIDGE-it) is planning on abandoning her to return home to France. With her survival kit in tact, Lucky plans an escape of her own into the desert, hoping the town of Hard Pan comes to realize what they've lost.

There's so much I could say about this book because there's just so much that doesn't make sense. For instance, why would a woman like Brigitte ever agree to fly to America and raise a child that isn't hers, that's her ex-husband's? Why in a town of only 43 (well, actually 42) people are there AA meetings for every sort of addiction known to man? Things that are supposed to seem interesting and unique have a tendency to come off boring and often times, forced in this book. I just didn't find any of it as special or meaningful as the author would've liked me to.

My biggest problem with the book is that Patron's voice is too scattered. It's not clear who she's writing this for. Lucky is nine years old, the same age as the fifth graders I teach, however a lot of the subject matter discussed in this book would mean nothing to them. At times Patron tries to write and sound like a nine year old, but she has difficulty making this believable because Lucky doesn't think and talk like a normal nine year old. It seemed to me that Patron was trying too hard to write how a child would write and this effort didn't carry evenly throughout the book. To be quite honest, it doesn't work and I think most children Lucky's age that pick up this book, will end up putting it down out of boredom.

There were a few things I didn't hate though. Lucky has a list of "good mother" qualities and "bad mother qualities". This list was adorably touching and heart wrenchingly sad at the same time. I lightly chuckled when Lucky, who wants badly to run away, can only think of places in Hard Pan to hide. She doesn't know how to actually "leave" Hard Pan and like the previous example, it's funny but somehow sad at the same time. Matt Phelan's subtle pencil drawings add a lot to the story as well. Cute as these scenes were, I just couldn't escape the fact that this book is flat out boring most of the way through.

Maybe I didn't read between the lines enough. Maybe I'm nit-picking. Maybe the things I just couldn't get over really aren't that important when telling the story. But don't we have the right to be a little nit-picky when we're talking about the Newbery Award winner? This is the book that is supposed to stand above all other children's books in a given year and I found it incredibly dull. I continue to be disappointed in the Newbery Honor and Medal books year in and year out. They've lost touch with who these books are supposed to be written for and most of the time, I'm left scratching my head.

Now let's get this straight, I don't like to write negative reviews. I don't get a thrill out of tearing down someone else's hard work. However, I happen to believe that a bad or negative review, is better than no review. It's in all fairness to the author, Susan Patron, that I write this, whether she or anyone else cares to read it or not. I guess I wouldn't have disliked this book as much as I did if it wouldn't have won the Newbery, but when a title has that shiny medal gracing its cover, it better darn well live up to the hype. Sorry folks, this one didn't.

I was surprised to hear that some libraries were banning this delightful book for one word, 'Scrotum'. A word I used to refer to 'that place' from the time my son was two years old without embarrassment or making him feel uncomfortable about his body. Since when was scrotum a dirty word? It reminds me of a time when my son was five and overheard the word 'vagina' while we were in the waiting room of my doctor's office. When he curiously asked me what it meant, I was able to explain it in a way appropriate for his age without a red face or the type of reaction that would make him self-conscious. Perhaps grown-ups need to do a bit more 'growing up', for these words are 'out there' in the real world and banning a book isn't going to take away all exposure to commonly used dialogue about the human anatomy (unless you raise your child in a bubble). This is a good children's book, and obviously I'm not the only one who thinks so or it wouldn't have won an award. As parents, perhaps we need to help children feel good about themselves on the inside, and our reactions to words that describe them on the outside can sometimes make the difference between them feeling comfort, or discomfort about their own bodies. As for my own son, he's a mature, confident twenty-one year old in college who shows no signs of 'mental damage' from hearing the words scrotum, vagina, rectum, (he was present when our dog had to have a 'rectal' thermometer), etc. at a young age. I believe many adults have to get over their own childhood memories of unnatural reactions to medical terms for the anatomy, and that's the real reason they avoid books that might put them in the position of explaining anything 'natural'.

But enough of that. This is a fantastic children's story with great illustrations that I found very enjoyable to read, and I plan on reading it to my future grandchildren.

Chrissy K. McVay

Author of 'Souls of the North Wind'

. . . yet oddly, Amazon reviewers seem to be coy about mentioning the shock factor in Susan Patron's winning book for middle-schoolers. Will readers divide into two groups: those who quit at the "s" word, and the others who continue beyond page 1 to discover the same word in the story's almost-last page? Regarding the first group, is the author saying "well, that's their problem"? The only objectors MAY turn out to be practiced book banners and parents who cannot bring themselves to teach their children biological terms, or school board members who dread to spend time defending freedoms. Does Susan Patron ponder whether someone writing about hope & growing up needs to fall back on the shock factor?

There are other attention-getters such as young friend Lincoln & his passion for the International Guild of Knot-Tyers, revelations of members practicing twelve-step programs, the seldom-used topic of 'cremains.' The Found Object Wind Chime Museum & Visitor Center could also qualify as unusual.

A ten-year-old girl living in Hard Pan CA acquires a live-in guardian, Brigitte, from France. The desert town is a dot on the map with 43 inhabitants. Some attend "anonymous" meetings & Lucky listens to their witnessing surreptitiously. Her goal is to discover a Higher Power and surmount her own life problems; in particular, to prevent her guardian from returning to Paris.

When the 'signs' are right Lucky takes her survival backpack & HMS Beagle, her loyal canine companion, on a carefully planned getaway. This does succeed in drawing attention to her fears & subsequently those needs are properly buttoned up because Lucky, a smart young fan of Charles Darwin, has Patron's young audience latching on to the story like tagalong Miles.

Two mentions regarding a shock element: I had just begun reading "Lucky" before watching the 1987 film "I Heard the Mermaids Singing." It included a too-funny shocker: a Kabayaki eel (?) entree served at a Japanese restaurant. And that brought back a quotation of Frank Lloyd Wright about the Soldiers & Sailors monument in the center of Indianapolis: "I remember that . . . and I presume that was its purpose."

If this Newbery medal winner elicits negative reactions from you, try to remember the word "scrotum" is not a serpent arranged artistically on a dinner plate, or something to detour school board members from getting beyond tests & standards. This is not an example of tabloid mentality invading our brains. Reviewer mcHAIKU finds this a thought-provoking, entertaining story that is cooky-coated to allow childhood realities to filter through. It is as beautifully crafted as the intricate rose knot presented to Lucky by an admiring future president, and as 'swift' as her improvised disposition of her mother's ashes. Lucky is neither 'slow' nor lacking ingenuity.

I was surprised at all of the hoopla over this book given the use of one word. Its hard to think there are people out there who deem this book inappropriate over the word, scrotum. I'm surprised by people who have had issues with book solely for this reason. It makes me wonder if these critics really live in the reality of our times where there is far more offensive language on television, advertising and even t-shirts.

People complain that they don't trust Newbery books now. Newbery winners have always been a rather mixed lot. Some books are enjoyed by many children and some are tedious reads even for adults. What they represent are pieces of young literature that have been deemed excellent for a number of reasons. I can recall being bored by "Sarah, plain and tall" but enjoying "Island of the blue dolphins" even though my mother was concerned about the more violent aspects of the book.

As for "the higher power of lucky" this is another slice of life tale dealing with the difficult and stressful events today's kids deal with. Lucky lives in fear of abandonment uses fanciful ideas to help empower herself to overcome some of the challenges she faces and depends on her friends to help her. What better lesson can there be than empowerment?

Lucky Trimble is a 10-year-old scientist living in Hard Pan, CA, a town with only 43 citizens. Her best friends, a dog named HMS Beagle, a recovered alcoholic cowboy named Short Sammy, a knot tying president-to-be named Lincoln, and a cookie-eating five-year-old named Miles. She lives in a series of 3 connected trailers with her Brigitte, a young French woman who loves to cook but (according to Lucky) probably doesn't always love her job as a gaurdian ever since Lucky's mom died after a desert thunderstorm, whose ashes still sit in the urn Lucky cannot let go of.

I am a teen and I loved this book. It was nice, unique, and short, too, and wasn't 100 pages too long like last year's Newbery Metal, "Criss-Cross". It is very original with simple pencil illustrations, which was a nice touch, and will probably keep its young readers interested. I cannot think of any other book that is similar to "The Higher Power of Lucky".

Don't let the use of the "s" word on the first page turn you away. Of course, I was surprised and for this reason it may be an iffy read-aloud. I do believe the author could have chosen many other more appropriate places for the dog to get bitten on, but that is beyond the point. Ms. Patron chose this word and that is what is published; that was her own free choice as an author to include that in her book, just as it was to include Lucky listening in on people's testimonies in the Smoker, Alcoholic, and Drug meetings. You can make your own choice whether to include this in your children's library or not, but the "s" word reference seems to be causing a stir and I can completely understand why, but kids need to read, and this is literature, and literature and books are very important. A few sentences shouldn't let a child miss out on the tale of Lucky and her adventures in Hard Pan and her search for a Higher Power. Who knows, maybe it'll just go right over some kids' heads?

Without a doubt, "Lucky" is truly a unique story without any comparisons!

This is an amazing children's book and deserved its award. I've purchased 2 for my nieces and one for a friend's child. The story is rich and vibrant and the artwork is bold. Its refreshing to see a book for young readers that tackles a topic harder than who should be allowed in the treehouse.

As for the hoopla surrounding one single word in the book, grow up.

"Heather Has 5 Husbands" would be an INAPPROPRIATE book for children, "The Higher Power Of Lucky" by contrast, is highly APPROPRIATE.

A+

I decided to purchase this book based on early reviews, and after the controversy over the author's use of the word "scrotum," felt a moral obligation to buy it. I found the book to be a charming and engaging work about an inquisitive little girl. Patrone adeptly chronicles a young girl struggling to identify herself as an individual. Lucky's life mirrors the lives of so many children: exposed to adult themes/settings without fully understanding them. Eventually Lucky turns to a trusted adult for clarification. If only other children were so lucky. This is a great book for parents to read and then to discuss with their children.