After her mother died a few years ago, she realized that her title character 'was really dealing with losing her mom.' The writing started to go faster at that point." That gave the book its heart."The Washington Post also reports on Patron's creative path: "For a long time she had the characters in her head but didn't know what they would go on to do. "I had this sense of being unmoored-it was a very surprising feeling. Each time I'd send him a draft, he'd say, 'Not ready, not yet.' So I'd take another stab." Patron found a new direction for Lucky after her mother passed away. Patron says she ended up working on the book for 10 years. Pretty speedy path to publication, right? Well, not exactly. "Amy Kellman asked me, "What are you working on?' I thought, 'Here's my chance to pitch this book.' I told them about it and they laughed at all the right places, and Dick said, in so many words, 'Send me some chapters and I'll send you a contract.'" Patron recalls a dinner at an ALA midwinter conference given by Dick Jackson, who had edited her earlier books. (Oct.Publishers Weekly offers some interesting remarks from Susan Patron about how she came to write her Newbery-winning novel for the middle grades, The Higher Power of Lucky: The genesis for Lucky goes back a number of years. And you can't hang people, either")-nicely delivers the message that prophecies are for people who don't want to control their own destiny. The conclusion-in which Robi and others start a new country with a new constitution of sorts ("No one can hit anybody. When Robi nearly comes to the same end, Yorsh makes it his quest to rescue her. Yorsh returns to Daligar to learn, from their daughter, Robi, that his former companions have been hanged for protecting the elf. Interestingly, the prophecy does not amount to much. Yorsh stays to care for the dragon 13 years later, the dragon dies and leaves behind an egg that hatches into a 1,600-pound baby.
While escaping from prison, the companions discover snippets of a prophecy: "When the last dragon and the last elf break the circle, the past and the future will meet, the sun of a new summer will shine in the sky." Convinced he is "the last elf" of the prophecy, Yorsh and company set out to find the last dragon, who turns out to be an elderly emotional wreck. He befriends two humans, a woman and a hunter, and the three are captured and imprisoned in the town of Daligar. Young elf Yorsh lives in a world of constant rain, in an "Elf Camp" and threatened with dire punishment if he strays outside it. Italian author De Mari turns the "prophecy genre" on its ear with this clever and humane fantasy/comedy.
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