Early today I finished reading Susan Patron's The Higher Power of Lucky (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2006), Newbery Award winner and the center of a silly controversy–so silly and so well known that I won't rehash it here. Lucky is a 10-year-old girl who shows curiosity, imagination, grit, pluck, vulnerability, and love. Her life in Hard Pan, population 43, in the California desert may seem small compared to the life of an urban child her age, but Lucky doesn't see it that way. In a town with a Cannery Row sort of cast of characters Lucky appreciates each one's quirks while oblivious to her own. She always, but always carries her survival backpack. This would seem odd if she had not lost her mother two years earlier when her mother stepped on a downed power line and was electrocuted and if her father's only contact with her since her birth has been through paltry monthly support checks. She has good reason to feel threatened by the world.

Suffice it to say that this subtly plotted book whose characters win our sympathy is indeed worthy of the Newbery. After reading it one thinks only of them, not of a word that some–many of whom have probably not read the book–have erroneously made the book's focal point. I recommend you read it. You can't help but enjoy it.