The plot is realistic with the right amount of tension that will keep readers turning pages. Their friendship will test and carry them to a new self-confidence and healing. Salma is imaginative and artistic, but secretly longs to belong and stay in one place. Lucky is Lily’s last link to her mother, so she is determined to earn money and save his eyesight. Lily feels the loss of her mother, who is deceased. Lily and Lucky live with her grandparents. Readers will easily connect with Lily and Salma’s struggles, longings and hopes. Lord is a master at developing memorable characters. Readers will also gain insight into the lives of migrant children and how hard it is to be uprooted. Readers will learn a little history about the Mason bees that pollinate the blueberries and gardens, the raking of the wild Maine blueberries by migrant workers, and the top of a blueberry is shaped like a star. She paints a vivid picture of the blueberry barrens of eastern Maine. I love that Lord continues to use her home state of Maine as the setting for many of her stories. She draws her readers into the story with that great opening sentence (above) that begs the reader to want to know more. Ĭynthia Lord delivers a magical and richly textured story about an unlikely friendship between Lily, a French Canadian, and Salma, a Hispanic-American. Through their enduring friendship, both girls find their own inner strengths. When Salma decides to enter the Blueberry Queen Pageant, something a bilingual Hispanic migrant girl has not done before, Lily becomes aware of the town’s biases.

Salma helps Lily paint wooden bee hives to raise money for an operation to save Lucky’s eyesight. The girls bond over their love of dogs and painting.

Lily and her grandfather thank Salma at the migrant camp with a pork dinner pie. Lucky is Lily’s last link to her mother who left them with her grandparents when she was two. Salma, a migrant girl, grabs her peanut butter sandwich and lures Lucky before he runs onto a highway. Synopsis: Two girls from different cultures meet when Lily’s blind dog, Lucky, takes off across the blueberry barrens of Maine. Opening: The only reason I ever spoke to Salma Santiago was because my dog ate her lunch. Themes: Blueberries, Migrant workers, Hispanic-American children, Prejudice, Blind dog, Friendship, Multicultural

Rules by cynthia lord sparknotes