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Add a QuoteBut then she realized that, with ants, it wasn’t so much the one individual ant that counted. They all stayed seriously on their jobs and none of them went off on tangents the way people do. For instance, you didn’t have one ant deciding to meet a friend and another ant knocking off work early and another ant lying around staring at the clouds.
Brigitte watched, but one of the good things about her was that she didn’t act like she was the total boss of everything.
Lucky noticed that most people in Smithy’s didn’t actually _eat_ their parsley – it was there just for the fanciness of making a pretty green decoration and also because it looked healthy and made health-conscious people not worry so much about the bad cholesterol teeming around in their juicy hamburger.
It’s almost _impossible_ to get control of your life when you’re only ten.
Her regular clothes were faded from many washings and from the sun, but the redness of this dress was the same thing for your eyes as a sonic boom is for your ears, or a jalapeño pepper is for your mouth.
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Add a CommentWinner of the 2007 Newbery, this is the story of a little girl named Lucky living in the middle of the California desert with her guardian. It's a short, quick read, and Lucky's character is very well-drawn, even though I felt that the tone at times was too deliberately quirky. Lucky was precocious to the point of being annoying, but the story had a heartwarming ending and I'm not surprised it appealed to the awards committee that year, as this is exactly the sort of story they tend to reward. I loved the illustrations sprinkled throughout, too.
This is a good book
My review here: http://writbywhit.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-higher-power-of-lucky-are-newbery.html
This book was such a sweet and swift read. The author does an incredible job of capturing the thoughts of a 10.5 year old, and telling a story of belonging and letting go. It would be a wonderful book to use in a 3rd, 4th, or 5th grade classroom.
Lucky lives in Hard Pan, California (population 43) in a series of trailers that have welded together. Her mother is dead, her father lives somewhere else and sends too little money to her guardian, Brigitte to make ends meet. The scrape by with the help of Government Surplus rations, the food that no one else wants.
But Lucky has a problem. She is certain that Brigitte is about to abandon her to move back to France, leaving Lucky to go into an orphanage where Lucky's dog HMS Beagle can't follow her. To get back at Brigitte, Lucky plans to run away. Unfortunately a dust storm is coming, and local Kindergärtner Miles is making things more complicated.
This book won a Newbury award, but is not as good as the Newbury committee thinks it is. A little more explanation at the end, via some conversations between Brigitte and Lucky would have made this a five star outing.
I don't know why this book won a Newbery Medal. It's not very moving or exciting.
I started reading this book and was 3 chapters into it, and then I put it down and forgot about it. I didn't feel the pull to go back to it, it just wasn't engaging for me.
Deals with the philosophy of life from a child's perspective. Beautiful book for both young and old.