Lucky's mother has died, and since her father can't handle the pressure of raising his daughter alone, he calls his first wife, Brigitte, to come all the way from France to Hard Pan, California (population 43) to take care of Lucky. Lucky always worries that Brigitte will leave her too, but she isn't sure this will happen.
At the age of 10, Lucky has a job cleaning up the town hall after all of the 12-step meetings. She likes to listen to the tales told by the members of the various groups, and Lucky is also in search of her own Higher Power, just like she heats about in the meetings. She has two good friends, a boy named Linclon, who is an avid knot tier who also has aspirations of becoming President, and Miles, a 5-year-old boy who loves the book Are You My Mother? by P. D. Eastman.
The book has illustrations of various knots that are fun, and the relationship between Lucky and Brigitte is strange and fun. It makes for interesting reading.
Lucky's search for her Higher Power leads her to run away from home, but will that actually take her where she wants to be? Lucky has plenty of problems sorting out her life, and her adventures are worth the read.
So let's make some suggestions about uses in the classroom:
- Talk about what makes a family.
- Talk about what it would be like to live in a town as small as Hard Pan.
- Read Are You My Mother to the class and talk about why Miles likes the book so much. (You can talk about it throughout the whole book so you can see the changing perspective of the book.
- Experiment with tying knots.
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