The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had

By Kristin Levine
Lexile = 680
When Emma Walker moves to town, Dit is disappointed. First, Dit had heard that the new postmaster had a son, not a daughter. And Emma is black. The year is 1917 and the place is Alabama. Although Dit and his family are polite, if not actually friendly, to “colored people,” most of the town is not. In fact, when Dit and Emma actually become friends, Dit loses all his other friends.

Fall comes, and Emma is forced to go to the inferior school for black children. To make up for what the school is lacking, Emma makes Dit review all of his school lessons every night at her house. When Dit reviews the standard southern lesson on the War Between the States, (and how tragic it was that the South lost) Dit gets a quick and direct lesson on slavery from all of Emma’s family. This is just one incident in what turns out to be a change of mind-set for Dit.

But what Dit learns from Emma’s friendship leads to trouble for him. Big trouble…. Not just the bad luck that the title refers to.

The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had has enough humor to keep you reading, and then BAM! you might learn something, too.