Three Times Lucky, by Sheila Turnage, is about a girl named Mo who lives in Tupelo Landing. Ever since the Colonel found her as a baby in the hurricane where he lost his memory, Mo has been searching for her 'upstream mother' by sending out bottles with messages in them. Her guardians, Miss Lana and the Colonel run a cafe. One day, a detective, Joe Starr, comes in and asks about a murder he is investigating. Mo and her friend Dale help her friend Lavender with a car race he is in, but something goes wrong with Lavender's car and he gets a concussion. Mo calls the Colonel to ask if she can stay and look after him, but he says to come home right away, there has been a murder and they haven't caught the murderer yet. Then, a shady looking guy starts following Dale, and he and Mo think he is from the police to act as a body guard, but he is really Slate, the murderer. Meanwhile, Mo does a fundraiser for Lavender, and when she runs home, she finds the cafe ransacked and Miss Lana gone. Joe Starr's assistant watches Mo and Dale, and in the morning Slate calls asking for a ransom of half a million dollars, which they don't have. A while later, they get a call from the Colonel telling them to get a packet of papers from the cafe, but when they get to the cafe, Joe Starr's assistant is there. It turns out that she has been working for Slate all along, and that she found out about the packet, too, so they pop the tires on her car and run away. Meanwhile, a hurricane is coming, and Mo and Dale go out and find the Colonel and capture Slate and get Miss Lana back. After that, the Colonel gets his memory back.
I think that the theme of this book is to forget the past and live in the present. My first example is how the Colonel used to hate lawyers, so there was a 'no lawyers!' sign above the door in the cafe. Anyway, after the Colonel found out that he was a lawyer, he took down that sign. "The old sign - NO LAWYERS - came down. A new sign - WELCOME FRIENDS - went up" (302). My second example is when Mo finds a bottle after the hurricane with a note in it, but it only has a note that she wrote and put in it. Dale sees and says he is sorry, but Mo says it's alright because she has decided to stop looking for and be thankful for the life she has. "Thanks for saying you're sorry But you know what? I'm not" (312). My last example is when the Colonel tells Mo about the packet of papers. "I'll accept responsibility for my past, whatever it is" (286). I think that live in the present is an important theme in this book.
I don't think that I would recommend this book to other7th graders, but I would recommend it to younger kids. The writing is more towards that age group. It has an average plot line and characters, and is a lot like Disney, although it doesn't have very good dialogue. If you like Disney movies, this would be a good book for you.
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