The Best Bad Luck I Ever Had in Mock Newbery 2026

Sep 14, 2014 Jan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

“I’ve been wrong before. Oh heck, if I’m being real honest, I’ve been wrong a lot. But I ain’t never been so wrong as I was about Emma Walker. When she first came to town, I thought she was the worst piece of bad luck I’d had since falling in the outhouse on my birthday.”

It’s the summer of 1917 in Moundville, Alabama. Harry “Dit” Sims can’t wait for the new postmaster Mr. Walker to arrive on the train from Boston with his family. He’s excited because he’s heard Mr. Walker has a twelve year old s “I’ve been wrong before. Oh heck, if I’m being real honest, I’ve been wrong a lot. But I ain’t never been so wrong as I was about Emma Walker. When she first came to town, I thought she was the worst piece of bad luck I’d had since falling in the outhouse on my birthday.”

It’s the summer of 1917 in Moundville, Alabama. Harry “Dit” Sims can’t wait for the new postmaster Mr. Walker to arrive on the train from Boston with his family. He’s excited because he’s heard Mr. Walker has a twelve year old son, the same age as Dit. He sure hopes the boy loves to play baseball and go fishing. He hasn’t had anyone to pal around with since his best friend Chip left to spend the summer with his grandmother in Selma. He and the townspeople are very surprised when the new postmaster arrives and is not the white man they were expecting. Mr. Walker the new postmaster is black. And to Dit’s utter disappointment, he also doesn’t have a twelve year old son; he has a twelve year old daughter named Emma. To Dit’s way of thinking, things just couldn’t get any worse.

Emma and her parents move into the house right across from Dit’s. It’s so close he can watch her sitting out on her porch in her fancy dress, reading her books. His mom has always told him that he doesn’t have to like everyone, but he does have to be nice to them. In other words, go make friends with Emma, show her around, and find something the two of you can do together. He really didn’t want anything to do with her and is not happy about this. He didn’t give a hoot that she’s black; it’s the fact that she’s a girl and doesn’t play baseball or go hunting or fishing that upsets him. How could he be friends with someone who always wore a frilly dress and shoes and had her nose in a book? Dit has many preconceived ideas about who Emma is. What was he going to do with a prissy girl who is the only kid in town who wears shoes, and clean shiny shoes to boot! He figures he can get rid of her if he can find something that she would probably hate. Climbing one of the mounds (what Moundville was named for) seemed like the perfect thing. “I figured that Emma wouldn’t like getting sweaty and dirty and that climbing the mound would be the best way to get rid of her.” He was right that she didn’t want to get sweaty and dirty. That’s how she was raised, plus she hadn’t had any opportunities to do any outdoor things in Boston. Her family lived in a row house with no yard and the park to play in was a bus ride away. But she hung in there and proved him wrong. She loved the view from the top of the mound, telling Dit it was worth the scolding she was going to get from her mama when she saw how dirty her dress was. I had to laugh a bit at Dit’s reaction. “I frowned. She wasn’t supposed to like it that much.”

Later Emma asks Dit to teach her how to throw a baseball so she can join in when all the kids in town get together for a game. Dit tells her she has first has to learn to skip stones across the water down at the river. I loved how the author described the scene when Dit was trying to teach Emma how to hold the stone correctly before skipping it. “I took her hand in mine and wrapped it around a smooth flat stone. Her fingers were cool and stiff, but her skin was beautiful, kind of like the mud in a creek after a hard rain.” Oh, I just loved that!

“I started to do some thinking. Taking Emma to the top of my mound hadn’t gotten rid of her. She hadn’t cried on the fishing trip, not even when we had to walk through the rain and the mud to Jim Dang-It’s. Now Emma had gone and learned how to skip stones when I had thought she couldn’t. Maybe there was other stuff I was wrong about too. Maybe Emma was someone who’d make a good friend.”

What I loved so much about their relationship was how they helped each other step outside of their respective comfort zones. For Emma it was climbing hills, getting dirty and sweaty, and learning how to fish and play baseball. Without being pushy or bossy, Emma got Dit to begin thinking about things he had never really paid much attention to before, like how much his words and actions could hurt others, or that killing animals for fun wasn’t a kind thing to do. One of my favorite scenes was when he was walking home from school with his friends Chip and Buster. His sister Pearl and her friend Mary were walking in front of them. The other two boys started teasing Mary by saying things like “I know how to spell Mary, S-T-U-P-I-D”. Dit tells them to knock it off but they keep it up. Dit remembers how he did the same thing last year to girl named Isabelle. Dit had thought it was funny and had spelled her name I-D-I-O-T. “I remember laughing as she cried. But this year it didn’t seem funny. And I finally realized that the idiot had been me.” In that moment, Dit had just grown years beyond his peers in maturity. I also think he knew how much Emma’s influence was making him a better person. Her voice had begun playing in his head, always asking him why he did or said the things he did. Suddenly, doing some of the things all the other boys did that used to seem like fun, didn’t seem fun anymore. They seemed mean.

Without spoiling a major part of the story for those who haven’t read it, I will say that Dit and Emma do something risky, but also ingenious, that has a very happy outcome. Dit’s father tells him he knows what he and Emma did and how proud he is of him. Dit asks him if he’s ever going to give him “the talk.” His father tells him that his older brother can give him the one about girls. “But the part about being a man, you don’t need that. That you already know.” I completely agree.

For Dit, meeting Emma wasn’t the bad luck he thought it was. Meeting her turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to him.
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Jun 20, 2012 Brandy rated it really liked it

Loved this book. It seems that with out intending to I keep picking up books that are set in the civil right era. And I am learning that I really love books in that genre. Just like my love for books set during WWII, I think I love reading books where the oppressed people overcome and people learn love and tolerance.

I especially love reading civil rights books from a child's perspective because children are so pure and non judgmental.

This book was very good. I am not sure if I like it or Lions ...more

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Jan 15, 2010 alisonwonderland (Alison) rated it really liked it

Shelves: middle-grade, historical-fiction, beehive-clau, 2009-publication-date, mms-book-challenge-list-2011, audiobook, beehive-2012

Emma Walker moves to Moundville, Alabama, in 1917, and Harry "Dit" Sims' life is changed forever as he begins to see the world in more than black and white.

4 1/2 stars. I liked Levine's The Lions of Little Rock , which is set in the early days of the civil rights movement, more - but this one is fabulous too. Dit's voice is wonderful - read by Kirby Heybourne in the audio version - and I adored Emma. ...more

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May 29, 2009 Kristen Jorgensen rated it liked it

Shelves: mock-newbery-book-2010

Dit lives in Alabama before the civil rights movement took place. The anticipated arrival of the newly hired postmaster and his supposed son were the talk of the town. Instead, amid great surprise, the new postmaster from Boston is black and, to Dit's dismay, his would-be son is Emma, a bookwormish girl.

Dit's reluctance and Emma's suspicions are hard to swallow but as their adventures continue they come to trust and rely upon each other. Dit and Emma teach each other and make each other a better ...more

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Sep 24, 2009 Dest rated it it was amazing

Shelves: historical-fiction, families, tween, bipoc

I don't have a single complaint about this book. It was well-written, enjoyable, and I learned a little something about being 13 years old in small-town Alabama in 1918. I'd be happy if it got a Newbery nod.

The story's told by Dit, one of ten children, who is just your average kid until he befriends the daughter of the town's new postmaster: a super smart girl named Emma, who is black. Because it's 1918 and rural Alabama, their friendship is uncomfortable for many townspeople, both black and wh ...more

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