What Lois Lowry Remembers

December 29, 2021 7:47 AM

Literature, for all of us, is a way that we rehearse life.
posted by toastyk (8 comments total)

Thanks for posting this! I love the Anastasia books so much and I hope they never try to update them beyond the covers; they were already a bit of a time capsule when I read them in the late 80s, but they were perfect.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 9:02 AM on December 29, 2021 [3 favorites]

I read this the other day. A really nice interview.
posted by Orlop at 9:22 AM on December 29, 2021

I love her work so much and am delighted to hear that she has a new book coming out in the fall.

But wow, is she not kidding when says that Autumn Street is not a book for children, even though the narrator is about six years old. On top of a grisly murder of a young child, there’s an incredibly upsetting situation with another child who tortures animals and deliberately injures his twin brother. Just…be aware if you pick it up, since the descriptions on the back never mention those things.
posted by corey flood at 11:02 AM on December 29, 2021

Thanks for this, it is an excellent interview with an author I have admired for a long time.

Here's an archive link for anyone else who has hit their New Yorker article limit.
posted by rpfields at 1:02 PM on December 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

I read a lot of her books, especially the Anastasia Krupnik books, when I was a child. I love that she thinks adult Anastasia would probably have a Master’s degree in Library Science.

This bit made me laugh:

I once got a complaint from a parent because an adult in “Number the Stars” uses the word “damn.” She said, “We don’t use profanity in our house and I won’t allow a book that contains that.” I have saved, over the years, some of the letters; you can almost see the outrage in the penmanship. The salient phrase from that letter was “Jesus would be ashamed of you.” I try to answer these people graciously, but sometimes it’s hard because they’re so stupid.

posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 1:04 PM on December 29, 2021 [8 favorites]

Lowry’s recent book On the Horizonabout her and a Japanese friend’s experiences of WWII is quite something. It’s not for little kids, to say the least, but it’s also structured like many books of poems for kids.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 8:13 PM on December 29, 2021 [1 favorite]

Thank you for posting this; I enjoyed it and wouldn’t have seen it otherwise.
posted by charmedimsure at 12:11 AM on December 30, 2021 [1 favorite]

It somehow just dawned on me that my beloved Anastasia Krupnik and my beloved Number the Stars are by the same person. I read the first Anastasia installment so many times it’s passed into the fabric of my consciousness somehow. It’s been 20 years since I read it and sometimes I’ll be doing something random and suddenly I’ll hear in my mind, “I could be the real Anastasia!” “If you are, you’re remarkably well preserved.”
posted by acantha at 11:52 AM on January 1, 2022