The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had

Taken from Levine's family history, this story tells of the life-altering friendship between a white Alabama farm boy and an African-American city girl. Kirby Heyborne effectively portrays Harry, better known as "Dit," the 12-year-old narrator of the story. His enthusiasm is evident as he stands at the train station awaiting the arrival of the new postmaster and his 12-year-old son. You hear all the disgust and disappointment in Dit's voice when he realizes that the boy is not only a GIRL but also black! Young Dit is believable as he slowly risks friendship with Emma, teaching her baseball while admiring her broader experience. The friendship leads him to question the status quo and find the courage to act against his town's Jim Crow justice. N.E.M. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Starred review from December 15, 2008
Tension builds just below the surface of this energetic, seamlessly narrated first novel set in small-town Alabama in 1917. Twelve-year-old Harry, aka Dit, has been looking forward to the arrival of the new postmaster from Boston, said to have a son Dit's age. The “son” turns out to be a girl, Emma, and to everyone's surprise, the family is what Dit calls “colored” and others call “Negras.” Emma, bookish and proud, impresses Dit with her determination (he calls it stubbornness) when she decides to learn to throw a ball or climb, and when Emma's mother upbraids him, Dit begins to rethink what he's been taught about the South's sorrowful defeat in the War Between the States. Levine sets up a climactic tragedy that will challenge the community's sense of justice; although hair-raising Mockingbird–
esque events are becoming common in YA novels about inequality in the segregated South, Levine handles the setting with grace and nuance. Without compromising the virtues and vices of her characters, she lets her readers have a happy-enough ending. Ages 10–up.