Whenever I was bored and didn’t have anything to read (and was too lazy to even walk down to the public library), I’d borrow books from my sister, the only other sibling in our family that read books as voraciously as I did, and had a pretty nice collection, in her own right!
These were, as can be expected, the usual Young Adult fiction that I guess most girls had- the Judy Blume Books, the S.E. Hinton books, et al, and while I DID enjoy reading those books too (yes, I think I went through them all at some point), one that I ALWAYS enjoyed reading, and eventually had to get a copy of my own, was a book called The Luck of Pokey Bloom, written by Ellen Conford and illustrated by Bernice Loewenstien.
Luck’s something that seems to have avoided Charlotte “Pokey” Bloom- no matter what, she simply can’t seem to win in any contest she’s entered, and she is determined to find the great SECRET to break her losing streak! This story was so much fun- more like a Beverly Cleary does Brady Bunch story than Judy Blume’s Tiger Eyes if you get my meaning! In fact, I always imagined Eve Plumb as Pokey!
Now, while the overall plot of the story is Pokey’s obsession with winning a contest, the rest of the story is filled with the rambling exploits of a zany, ambitious teenager, and it’s these chapters that really seem the most interesing to me: shopping for her mother’s birthday gift, trading insults with her brother, and even doing community cleanup with her girl friends!
And Contests! Cake Slogan contests, Radio Call-ins, Greeting Card sales- Every contest that she COULD enter WAS entered, every contest she didn’t win was another crushing loss- but each loss strengthened her resolve!
One day she meets a lady named Virginia Hopewell who tells her the BIG secret: To win, you must convince yourself in you mind that you’ve already WON, every minute of the day for every day, you have to tell yourself “I’m the Winner!” So Pokey sets off to try this new theory, only to find the distractions that enter a young girl’s life on a daily basis makes concentration harder than she thought!
One thing I always remembered about the story was this side story with Pokey’s brother Gordon. At one point, he suddenly becomes obsessed with Yoga and health food in general, and no one can figure out why…But after a bit of spying, Pokey and her friend George find out he’s fallen for some girl who works at the local Health Food store! No wonder! Later when she declines his advances, his interest in Health dies off as well!
So every time in life I found myself getting interested in something because of a girl, I’d always laugh and say “I’m being like Pokey Bloom’s brother!” then I’d laugh again, thinking of how book I read as a 7th grader still surfaced in my mind even to this day!
Ellen Conford is a beloved Children's Book writer, perhaps most famous for her Jenny Archer and Annabel the Actress series and the book "Dear Lovey Hart, I Am Desperate" the latter of which was a pretty popular ABC Afterschool Special, as I recall!
