The Higher Power of Lucky

By: Susan Patron

Illustrations by: Matt Phelan

I, like many others, wanted to see what all the "scrotum" hype was about. Many know this won The Newbery Medal this year and yes, it has the word scrotum on the first page. So what?? It's easy to pick apart bits and bits of a story without looking at the whole picture. I was discussing the fact that scrotum is on the first page of the recent Newbery winner with a co-worker. He said, "Well, was it really necessary to use that word? Couldn't the author have used another word instead or just have taken that part out of the story?" I said, "No!" To me, it would have changed the meaning of the story. The author stated in an interview I heard that though the book is fiction, some things are based on true stories. She didn't want to change the word. To her, using scrotum had meaning and this was her choice. (I'm not going further into this topic and say how it's crazy for books to be pulled off shelves. This is censorship at its worst!)

For me, the story of Lucky and her guardian, Brigitte started out slow. The farther I read, the more entertaining and engaging the story became. I really felt sorry for this little girl. Lucky felt like no one wanted her and she even felt like Brigitte would up and move back to France. This is very hard for someone to deal with, especially a child of Lucky's age. She wanted to find her Higher Power like the people in Smoker's Anonymous and Gambler's Anonymous and like the people in AA. At the end, she does find her higher power and there is a happy ending.

Though I'm glad I read the book to satisfy my curiosity, this is probably not a book I would reread. I couldn't really relate to the story and I know this shouldn't always matter. I just don't like it enough for a reread.