The book's title of Three Times Lucky refers to a passage in which Mo talks about her origin story and how she came to live in Tupelo Landing:
Some say I was born unlucky that night. Not me. I say I was three times lucky.
Lucky once when my Upstream Mother tied me to a makeshift raft and sent me swirling downstream to safety. Lucky twice when the Colonel crashed his car and stumbled to the creek just in time to snatch me from the flood. Lucky three times when Miss Lana took me in like I was her own and kept me. (3.10-11)
The title is a shout-out to how Mo frames her life. Instead of thinking about the negative aspects of her story—like how she doesn't know who her parents are, and how she was floating down the creek in a raft as a little baby—Mo focuses on the positive. She decides to embrace the fact that she survived and was found by a wonderful family, mostly enjoying where life has taken her. Without her bright and optimistic spirit, the tone could get pretty depressing in this book.