Three Times Lucky

As a winner of the Newbery Honor Award and a New York Times Best Seller, Three Times Lucky is a children's chapter book written by Sheila Turnage in 2012.   Prior to reading this book, I was told it was a historical fiction novel however as I continued to read through the book it became clear that this novel is classified a suspense story.  The plot centers around the two main characters, Mo and Dale, who take it upon themselves to investigate a murder mystery within their hometown.  As they work together, they begin discovering connections between their personal lives and the mystery at hand as both Miss Lana and the Colonel end up being kidnapped and held for a ransom.  This story encourages readers to pay close attention as they read in order to piece together key details of the story to solve the mystery. 

One key element that became extremely helpful throughout the story was the presence of a map at the beginning of the story.  The map is of the town Tupelo Landing and served as a great resource to reference back to while reading the story in order to visualize where key events in the story were taking place.  Seeing as how the story takes place in North Carolina, it is rich with details of North Carolina geography as it references Raleigh and Winston Salem.  Due to this, it would be a great novel to incorporate into a geography unit in order to ensure integration of ELA topics.  Ironically, Three Times Lucky is also a series book and readers can follow Mo and Dale on their next investigation in a book entitled The Ghosts of Tupelo Landing.  Personally, I am really looking forward to reading the next book in the series as there were many references towards the ghosts of people who had past that once lived in Tupelo Landing and it should be extremely interesting to see how the author continues to tell the story of Mo and Dale.