The Thing about Luck Book Review by Cynthia Kadohata

  





Written by Cynthia Kadohata
Illustrated By Julia Kuo 

Published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers in 2013

ISBN: 978-1442474659

Plot Summary: Summer is a 12 year old girl who lives with her family in Kansas. She deals with a bout of malaria which almost takes her life and makes her not trust mosquitos anymore even though she sees them all the time. Her family is hired by Parker Harvesting Company to pick crops. Her parents have to go back to Japan all of a sudden so she is left with her grandparents and her brother Jaz. They get sent to Texas to harvest there but end up in Oklahoma even though they didn't get to see the finished product in Texas. Summer completes the work that is set before her and she gets the full amount of the company when they head back to Kansas where she catches up with her parents and learns the value of hard work. 

Critical Analysis: The thing about luck is a coming of age story that shows many different aspects of what it means to be a part of a multigenerational family. Summer is the typical daughter who wants to do well and please her parents and grandparents but her life takes a turn that no one expected when her parents leave suddenly and she ends up needing to be the strong one in the family to keep everything going. The book focuses on Summer's growth into a young adult through the many trials and events that happens to her including getting malaria from the mosquito and having to move with her brother and grandparents down to Texas to do migrant farm work. Her coming of age includes her first kiss, learning about the traditional roles that women play with being in the kitchen and serving, and growing into a bigger role by taking over her grandpa's job when he becomes too worn out to continue. 

The illustrations add to the story especially when it comes to the harvesting portion of their journey as each step is shown and brings about a deeper level of understanding on just how hard that process is for a migrant worker with the amount of work that they are required to do in a very short amount of time. Kuo paints a picture with her illustrations about many of the trials and tribulations that Summer has to overcome and it pushes the story forward in a manner that makes it hard to put the book down once you have picked it up. 

Review: Kirkus

Twelve-year-old Summer and her Japanese-American family work every harvest season to earn money to pay their mortgage. But this year, they face unprecedented physical and emotional challenges. It has been a particularly hard-luck year. Among other strange occurrences, Summer was bitten by a stray, diseased mosquito and nearly died of malaria, and her grandmother suffers from sudden intense spinal pain. Now her parents must go to Japan to care for elderly relatives. So Summer, her brother and their grandparents must take on the whole burden of working the harvest and coping with one emergency after another. She writes a journal chronicling the frightening and overwhelming events, including endless facts about the mosquitoes she fears, the harvest process and the farm machinery that must be conquered. As the season progresses, her relationships with her grandparents and her brother change and deepen, reflecting her growing maturity. Her grandparents’ Japanese culture and perspective are treated lovingly and with gentle humor, as are her brother’s eccentricities. Kadohata makes all the right choices in structure and narrative. Summer’s voyage of self-discovery engages readers via her narration, her journal entries and diagrams, and even through her assigned book report of A Separate Peace.

Readers who peel back the layers of obsessions and fears will find a character who is determined, compassionate and altogether delightful. (Fiction. 10-14)

Connection: Students can learn more about migrant workers and what it means to be someone who has to move around to where the work is doing backbreaking work. 

https://www.migrantclinician.org/explore-migration/migrant-seasonal-farmworker.html#:~:text=A%20migrant%20farmworker%20is%20defined,remunerated%20employment%20in%20agricultural%20work.

More Books by Cynthia Kadohata

Cracker!: The Best Dog in Vietnam ISBN 978-1416906384

A Million Shades of Gray ISBN 978-1442429192



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free Lunch Book Review by Rex Ogle

Image
Written By Rex Ogle Published by Norton Young Readers in 2019 ISBN: 978-1324003601 Plot Summary: This is a memoir of Rex Ogle when he was in 6th grade. He was enrolled in the free lunch program at school as he was living in poverty at the time. The story begins with his mom Luciana in the grocery store as they are shopping for food but they only have so many dollars in food stamps that they can use. Rex remembers how angry he is that he never gets to choose food that he likes and both he and his mom are embarrassed as they didn't have enough money for the food that they chose so they only walk out with one bag of groceries even though they had chosen much more than that. Rex is anxious about going to school as he doesn't want the other kids to know that he was on the free lunch program and when he questions his mom she beats him and gives him a black eye which he has to explain away at the school. Rex has to announce that he has free lunch in the line which embarasses him even
Read more

Scythe by Neal Shusterman Book Review

Image
  Written By: Neal Shusterman Published By: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in 2017 ISBN: 978-1442472433 Plot Summary: The year is 2042 and artificial intelligence has become alive and thinks for itself and has created a network called the Thunderhead. As it knows all, it has figured out how to keep humans alive indefinitely. The problems of how to feed and shelter everyone is still an issue so a job is created called being a Scythe. They are required to kill a certain number of people to balance the scales. Two teenagers are training to be a Scythe and their names are Citra and Rowan. They are supposed to both be trained and then one is chosen while the other goes back to their normal life. Other Scythes decide though that whoever wins has to kill the other as their first kill. Their trainer pretends to kill himself so they are sent to train under other scythes. Citra finds out that their original trainer is still alive and creates a plan to make everything work out for h
Read more

The Surrender Tree by Margarita Engle Book Rev

Image
   Written by Margarita Engle  Published by Square Fish in 2010  ISBN: 978-0312608712 Plot Summary: The book is based on Rosario Castellanos Castellanos who is a famous person in Cuban American history. She was a freed slave who works as a nurse for the rebels who are fighting against the Spanish in the mid to late 1800's in Cuba. The poems are free verse and are written from the perspective of 4 different people: Rosa, Jose her husband, a slave hunter named Lieutenant Death in the story, and a girl named Sylvia. The novel is written in 5 different parts that cover Rosa's story from childhood to adulthood.  The first part is titled "The Names of the Flowers" and is talks about how Rosa grows up in the field amd learns about the healing properties of different plants and herbs from the women. Rosa helps to heal runaway slaves who have been beaten after running away and this is where she meets Teniente Muerte otherwise known as Lieutenant Death. The Lieutenant doesn'
Read more