The Higher Power of Lucky

Gr 4-6When Luckys mother is electrocuted and dies after a storm, Luckys absentee father calls his ex-wife, Brigitte, to fly over from France to take care of the child. Two years later, the 10-year-old worries that Brigitte is tired of being her guardian and of their life in Hard Pan (pop. 42) in the middle of the California desert. While Luckys best friend ties intricate knots and the little boy down the road cries for attention, she tries to get some control over her life by restocking her survival kit backpack and searching for her Higher Power. This character-driven novel has an unusually complicated backstory, and a fair amount of exposition. Yet, its quirky cast and local color help to balance this fact, and the desert setting is fascinating. Luckys tendency to jump to conclusions is frustrating, but her struggle to come to terms with her mothers death and with her new life ring true. Phelans cover and line drawings are simple and evocative, a perfect complement to the text. Fans of novels by Deborah Wiles and Katherine Hannigan will be happy to meet Lucky.

"Adrienne Furness, Webster Public Library, NY"

Copyright 2006 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Patron's (Maybe Yes, Maybe No, Maybe Maybe) often poignant novel introduces 10-year-old Lucky, who lives in the California desert town of Hard Pan. After her mother died, Lucky's estranged father asked his former first wife, Brigitte, to travel from France and act as Lucky's guardian. The author's third-person narrative gently adheres to a child's perspective and reveals the warm relationship between Lucky and Brigitte. As the heroine goes about her work at the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, she eavesdrops on the meetings of various 12-step programs held there, listening to "the anonymous people" talk about hitting rock bottom and then gaining control of their lives through a Higher Power. If she could find her own Higher Power, Lucky feels "pretty sure she'd be able to figure out the difference between the things she could change and the things she couldn't." One thing she hopes will not change is her life with Brigitte, whom she fears will return to her much-missed homeland and leave Lucky with a foster family. Through her search for an HP, Lucky makes a few discoveries-such as the true identity of "the crematory man," who handed her an urn bearing her mother's ashes at the funeral, and the hidden talents of her knot-tying friend Lincoln. When Lucky hits her "rock bottom," she decides to run away with her beloved dog during a dust storm, a risky move that leads to an uplifting denouement. Though Lucky's ponderings sometimes grow repetitive, the sympathetic, pleasingly quirky characters define this tightly-knit hardscrabble community, affectionately portrayed in Phelan's half-tone illustrations. Ages 9-11.

Copyright 2007 Publishers Weekly Used with permission.