The Higher Power of Lucky

The Higher Power of Lucky is a quirky chapter book aimed at children ages 9-11 years, written by Susan Patron and illustrated by Matt Phelan. This book is about a 10 year old girl named Lucky who lives in the small trailer town of Hard Pan, California that has a population of 43 people. Lucky is an aspiring scientist who likes to examine the different species of Hard Pan like her idol Charles Darwin, and is also on a mission to find her own Higher Power. Lucky has heard of this mysterious yet inspiring Higher Power that changes your life for the better from the stories of the people who attend the Anonymous Meetings, whom she cleans up after as a small job. Lucky's story is unique because of her family situation: she never really knew her father and her mother died two years prior when she was eight. Since Lucky then became a warden of the state in need of a guardian, her absent father called on his Parisian ex-wife Bridgette, who flew to California to look after Lucky.

This book continues on to tell the reader of Lucky's fears of being abandoned by Bridgette and her plans to run away into the desert to find her Higher Power. However, her plans are set off-course as a dust storm makes it harder to survive than she expected. In the end, Lucky is reunited with her family and learns to appreciate the good things that can come from bad situations. With an incredibly lovable and relatable cast of characters, I easily fell in love with Lucky's story and the messages readers can take away from it. There are also some great science terminology in this book such as anti-venom, capillaries, specimen and enzymes. Geographical information such as weather patterns associated with certain regions are also included and could be used to examine climate facts.

Patron, S. (2006). The higher power of lucky. New York: Simon & Schuster.