Lucky Me

While driving to Annapolis on the weekend my mind wandered to The Higher Power of Lucky or more accurately to the book’s author, Susan Patron. Many, many years ago I worked in sales and marketing for the Children’s Book Division of an academic wholesaler, and got to meet lots of great children’s librarians and talk with them about books. (I was supposed to discuss how they bought books and suggest they buy books from my company but often found myself talking about what books we liked and why – that was way more interesting!) One of those librarians was Susan Patron. I met her only a couple of times, but because I found her dedicated and serious about her work with children and books, and also engaging, funny and smart, her name stuck with me. When she began getting published I naturally wanted to read her books because I thought she would be a good writer and I had a mad passion for Susan’s first publisher, Orchard Books. I continued reading and enjoying her books, right up through the one chosen as the year’s “most distinguished contribution to American literature for children.” Lucky readers.