The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata is one of those books that I considered abandoning several times. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, exactly–it was more that I didn’t discern a strong plot thread in it, so it didn’t seem to be going anywhere really. After finishing it, I still can’t say that there is a strong plot, and I still feel rather take-it-or-leave-it about it. It’s the story of Summer, a Japanese American girl living in Kansas, whose family works as wheat harvesters. She and her brother, Jaz, are taken out of school during the wheat harvest while the family travels to drive combines (the men) and cook for the harvesting crew. Summer and Jaz are actually in the care of their grandparents because their parents have been called back to Japan to care for ageing relatives. (There’s something ironic about this since both grandparents are elderly and the grandmother suffers chronic back/neck pain, but I deduced that the parents absence has something to do with Japanese culture that I don’t know.) Twelve year old Summer feels misunderstood and clashes with her grandmother frequently, but Grandmother is rather quirky and difficult (at least as the story is told from Summer’s perspective). The climax of the novel (*spoiler alert*) happens when Grandfather is too sick to drive his combine and Summer sneaks out of the hotel room and goes to drive for him at night. That’s the most exciting thing that happens in the story, unless you count the fact that Summer gets her first kiss from her crush, the harvest supervisor’s son. Oh, and she contracts malaria before the story begins, so she’s really, really afraid of mosquitoes. Really, this is basically a quietly quirky coming-of-age story, with the added interest of lots of wheat harvest details. Another point of interest for the plot is the fact that Jaz has some sort of disability or difference (PDD-NOS, OCD, or something) that makes life with him interesting and sometimes difficult. I did find Summer’s grandparents entertaining, and I think Summer’s thoughts and feelings are probably very realistic for a twelve year old. For the life of me, though, I can’t really figure out why this book was named a 2013 National Book Award finalist. I’ll be interested to learn whether or not the Cybils first round panelists see something in this book that I don’t. (Atheneum, 2013)
