Tuesday Tales: Lucky Breaks by Susan Patron; Illustrated by Matt Phelan

Hard Pan?

by Quinn Ryan Mattingly www.flickr.com

*Middle-grade novel, contemporary, realistic
*Almost 11-year-old girl as main character
*Rating: Lucky Breaks is a great sequel to Newberry-winning The Higher Power of Lucky, and Susan Patron has not disappointed us. “Scrotum” appears twice.

Short, short summary: Lucky and the lovable Hard Pan residents are back in this sequel, Lucky Breaks. And lots of stuff is going on in Hard Pan. Lucky is about to turn 11, and Miles is about to turn 6. They decide to have their birthday party together and invite all 43 residents of the town. Short Sammy says they can have the party at his house. Everyone agrees because he also says he will reveal the strange package he received one day. Lucky’s worried it’s a casket. Lucky also overhears Lincoln talking to Brigitte, Lucky’s legal guardian, about a knot-tying contest; and if he wins, he’ll leave Hard Pan for a year. Lucky wonders how her best friend could just leave her. But she feels slightly better when a new best friend candidate, a girl named Paloma, comes to Brigitte’s cafe one day. Lucky and Brigitte somehow convince Paloma’s overprotective mother to let her come and spend the night in Hard Pan, and Paloma’s mother is sure Lucky will use good judgment and keep her daughter safe. Has she met Lucky? With all these characters’ hobbies, interests, and feelings coming together in the the middle of the desert town of Hard Pan, you won’t be disappointed by the adventures that await you when you open Lucky Breaks.

So, what do I do with this book?

1. Some of the things that happen in Lucky Breaks are because of the desert that she lives in. Make a list with your students of the facts they can learn about living in a desert town from reading Susan Patron’s novel. You can either do this as a whole group activity or in small groups. Students could also make their own list in reading response journals while reading this sequel to The Higher Power of Lucky. Once you have a list, divide students into pairs or small groups and ask them to research more about these facts.

2. Working on prediction skills are easy with Lucky Breaks. You can start with trying to predict what is in Short Sammy’s box just like the rest of the residents in Hard Pan. Your students can also predict whether or not they think Paloma and Lucky will get into trouble or danger, and what they think it will be. Do they think Lincoln will win the knot-tying contest? Ask students to make predictions in their reading response journals; and then when you read the section that they predicted, students can write whether or not their predictions were correct.

3. Ask students to pretend to be Lucky and write a persuasive letter to Lincoln about why he should not go away if he wins the knot-tying contest. Ask students to imagine if their best friend was going to move away and how it would feel when they are writing the letter.

Any of these activities can be easily modified as a home school lesson.

If you haven’t read Susan Patron’s The Higher Power of Lucky yet, you might want to read this post about it that I wrote here.