In search of a higher power
A look at censorship and ‘The Higher Power of Lucky’

by Joe Foster

‘The Higher Power of Lucky,’ by Susan Patron, illustrated by Matt Phelan. Athenuem Books for Young Readers. 2006. 134 pages.

Over the last few months, Southwest Colorado has been the centerpiece for two ridiculous controversies. We all remember the embarrassing brouhaha about the peace sign in Pagosa Springs. You know, one ignorant dude thinks that peace is anti-American and satanic, and the entire region ends up looking like the crazy-militia-parts of Idaho. Sigh. Well, the non-crazy residents of our area just got a little more infamy-by-proximity piled on; one more reason to tell your friends over the phone, “No seriously, it’s really not like that here.” The second embarrassment is, actually, of a similar vein. You may or may not have heard, but a local Durango school librarian raised a bit of a stink online and ended up being quoted on the front page of the New York Times decrying the use of the word “scrotum” in the most recent Newberry Medal Award Winner, The Higher Power of Lucky. Stodgy librarians are banning this book all across the country in an effort to keep your kids safe from … something. Safe from YOUR inferior morality? Safe from the “Howard Stern” of books, this … Newberry Medal Winner? Safe from the damning knowledge of dog anatomy? (I’ll explain that part later … .)

Originally, when planning on reviewing this book, I had every intention of going on a page-long rant about
the evils of censorship and the unfathomable reasons that those few puritanical zealots feel compelled to push their morals and sensibilities on the community by filtering information deemed by these few to be unsuitable for the many. I was going to mention the irony that “Banned Books Week,” which happens every September, is the brainchild of the American Library Association. I was gonna point out that half of the book’s target audience has a scrotum, and the other half already knows this, and throwing the anatomically correct term at them might be better than them calling it “the ol’ tea bag.” I was going to do this whole bit about how the scrotum in question belonged, actually, to a dog and all kids have seen dog balls before. Dogs don’t even wear pants for crying out loud. I was gonna discuss the apparent need for dogs to wear pants to cover their balls to protect the children, which would, perhaps in turn, help protect our trails from poopy landmines, but who wants to change and clean canine-pantaloons, what with all the hair…

But then I read the book.

It’s really good. It’s a kids’ book with a target audience of ages 9-12, the girl Lucky being 10, and it’s really, really good. She’s an orphan, kinda, being raised by a sophisticated French beauty in the hardpan desert of California in a town called Hard Pan, with a population of 43. She has a job cleaning the porch in front of the Found Object Wind Chime Museum and Visitor Center, where all the 12 Step groups meet.

She cleans up the cigarette butts between Alcoholics Anonymous and Smokers Anonymous meetings, because the butts make the trying-to-stay-ex-smokers feel bad. She cleans up the candy wrappers after the smokers and before the over-eaters, etc. It’s whilst eavesdropping at a hole in the wall during one of these meetings that Lucky overhears the story of how her friend, Sammy, hit rock bottom. He was sitting drunk in his car, looked over, and saw a rattler biting his dog, unfortunately, on the scrotum. He fell out of the car and passed out, waking up later unsure if his dog was dead or alive. He made a pact with his Higher Power that if his dog was still alive, he’d quit. The dog made it, thanks to his disgusted wife. She left, and he quit. Listening to these things between meetings sends Lucky on a search for a Higher Power she can call her own. That’s pretty much the whole scrotum thing … in a nutshell. The book is about the spiritual journey of a young girl trying to make sense of the world around her.

Her mom died and her dad didn’t want her, so Lucky’s dad’s first wife flew in from France to take care of her for a while. Needless to say, Lucky has some abandonment issues and is never really secure with her situation. As such, she is obsessed with science, (less emotional, more analytical) and goes on specimen-collecting expeditions into the desert with her dog, HMS Beagle. Her best friends are Sammy the recovering alcoholic bachelor, Miles the cookie-addicted, free-range 5-year-old, and Lincoln. Lincoln’s mom is certain he will be president someday, and he might, but as of now he is one of the youngest members of the International Guild of Knot Tyers.

The characters are dynamic, the plot clips along and pulls you in, and the scene in which Lucky finds what she is looking for is sweet and somewhat brilliantly done. All in all, I would say that this book deserves its accolades. Those seeking to ban it should be ashamed of themselves for trying to deprive young minds of such a beautifully wrought story. •