The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron: I read this book because I think I need to as part of my job - it's a controversial award-winner. This 2007 Newbery winner has quirky characters: a 10-year-old motherless girl named Lucky, and her two friends, knot-tying Lincoln (whose mother is a part-time librarian in the nearest larger town, and whose dad is 23 years older), and Miles, who lives with his grandmother (since his mother is in jail) and wants to read/have read 1960's Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman over and over. Lucky lives in trailers with her young French guardian (her father's ex-wife) in a remote town, population 43 (apparently mostly members of 12-step programs) at the edge of a California desert. The controversy about the word "scrotum" on the first page of the book is overblown, but the story probably is not appropriate for children under 12 anyway. It's a heartfelt tale with an ending that brought tears to my eyes, but most 9- to 11-year-olds, the book's target audience, may not "get" it.
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan: I was impressed with how Egan made me care about the people in this book, and followed their stories through the various events and circumstances in the first 40 years of the 1900s. I've been to the southern edge of the Dust Bowl (in the Texas Panhandle) and the descriptions of the settings are quite accurate. I experienced my first dust storm on February 24, 2007, and it gave me a taste (literally) of what it was like for those folks. Well written and educational. Egan and The Worst Hard Time won the 2006 National Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2006 Washington State Book Award in History/Biography.
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