“The last thing Harry ‘Dit’ Sims expects when Emma Walker comes to town is to become friends. Proper-talking, brainy Emma doesn’t play baseball or fish too well; but she sure makes Dit think, especially about the differences between black and white. But soon Dit is thinking about a whole lot more when the town barber, who is black, is put on trial for a terrible crime. Together, Dit and Emma come up with daring plan to save him from the unthinkable.”
I’m a little on the fence about this one.
I do like the book. And by that, I mean I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. But now, trying to put down into words why I like the book? I… I can’t. I mean, the characters are standard, the events are commonplace…
Maybe it was the innocence.
The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had is set in a time where racism isn’t politically incorrect. It’s an accepted fact. Although, let’s be real, racism is alive and well today still. Thing is, here, no one looks away when it happens. African-Americans are supposed to take it, look down, and just move away.
But it’s been a couple of generations since the emancipation. The children in this story are no longer aware of what happened in the civil war. Most of them have been raised with Africa-America neighbors, and while racism is unapologetic, the children doesn’t really know where it stems from. They’re slurs. Insults. It’s the adults in the story who are more caught up in the implications of inter-racial friendship, of an African-American girl headlining a school play from the white school.
The book’s main draw is friendship. It’s a simple enough theme that children of all ages can relate to it. But underneath the story of a boy’s realization that girls can be as cool as his male friends, that the girl he thought would become a hindrance is actually teaching him more about himself, is the politically-charged tension between the whites and the African-Americans.
The synopsis tells us that Dit and Emma have to come up with a daring plan to save an African-American from the unthinkable. It’s the why they have to that will surprise you.
Innocence makes one question the whys of the world, but it is also this innocence that gets us into trouble. And author Kristin Levine manages to weave a magical story about the importance of questioning, of crossing boundaries, and of growing up with our childhood innocence intact.
Check out what other people have written about The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had:
Kids Reads
Sprout’s Bookshelf
Rated Reads
taking a break 