This is really an intersting book. I had read about it on another blog and decided I should read it. Mostly I was curious after reading that it had won a Newberry Medal award...but that some libraries had banned it because it includes a story about a dog's scrotum that gets bit by a rattlesnake. Kind of made me laugh! I had to find out how this author wove anything about scrotums into a kid's book. That mystery was solved in the first chapter (oh, and it comes up again at the end of the book in a strange way too)
I didn't think much about the cover when I first got the book from the library...but after reading it I really love the cover. It says so much! The red dress, the urn she's holding, the sweep of her arm...it all really portrays the book well.
The author has a great way of of writing how kids often seem to think...at least it reminded me of some of the things I thought when I was a kid. This book really made me think about how kids often don't always understand what is going on and they form their own conclusions - which are sometimes quite erroneous. That's what happens with Lucky and that's why she runs away.
The anonymous people struggled with the next step after rock bottom, the getting-control-of-your-life step. Lucky pounded the Formica table with both fists, which made HMS Beagle leap to her feet and look at Lucky woddiedly. 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. (page 80)
Lucky is 10 years old. She talks about things like 'the meanness gland in her heart' and the 'crevices full of questions' in her brain. I love some of the things that go through Lucky's mind:
Lucky felt very wonderful about her Heroic Deed of figuring out howto chase the snake away without killing it in a gruesome way or waiting for it to die of old age. Plus, if it had been a rattlesnake, nobody got bitten. She went inside, thinking she had to figure out some kind of screen to put on the vent to keep the snake from coming back. At that moment Lucky knew she was a highly evolved human being. (page 54)
Or how about this excerpt:
Lucky had the same jolting feeling as when you're in a big hurry to pee and you pull down your pants fast and back up to the toilet without looking - but some man or boy before you has forgotten to put the seat down. So your bototm, which is expecting the usual nicely shaped plastic toilet seat, instead lands shocked on the thin rim of the toilet bowl, which is quiet a lot colder and lower. Your bottom get a panic of bad surprise. That was the same thump-on-the-heart shock Lucky got finding out the Miles's mother was in jail. (page 73)
The odd thing about the book is the flap seems to portray that the book is about the girl having to run away. However, that doesn't happen until 100 pages into the book. I found myself wondering what this book was about anyway because I kept waiting for the running away part!
She has some cute friends in the story - her friend Miles who can't read yet and carries around 'Are you my mother?' all the time. That was a book Jill loved and I read it about 4872 times - and in the book Lucky is as tired of hearing that story as I was back in the day. :0) She also has a friend named Lincoln. Lincoln's mother figures he is destined to be the president of the United States. However, he's much more interested in tying knots (tying knots?? Yup....)
Lucky wished she were an artist too, and could organize all the complicated strands of her life - the urn she still had, the strange crematory man, Brigitte and Miles, HMS Beagle, and Short Sammy, the Captain adn the anonymous people and Dot and even Lincoln himself, and weave the mitno a beautiful ten-strand knot. (p. 69)
All in all, I think it's a great book. It was a great Sunday afternoon read.
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