Anastasia Has the Answers [Paperback]

Lois Lowry (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 9 and up | Grade Level: 4 and up | Series: Anastasia

Humiliated.



That's how Anastasia Krupnik feels whenever she tries to climb the ropes in gym class. How come everyone else can climb up those hateful ropes?



Since Anastasia has decided to become a journalist, it should be easy to answer most questions. Then why can't she understand about Daphne Bellingham's parents' divorce? And why can't she please Ms. Willoughby in gym class?



Finally Anastasia thinks she has the answers! When a team of foreign educators comes to visit her school, she plans a big surprise that will amaze her classmates, Ms. Willoughby, and the visitors. What will she do when her big moment arrives?

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The sixth story about irrepressible Anastasia Krupnik begins with Anastasia deciding she cannot attend the funeral of her Aunt Rose in California. Anastasia, it turns out, is afraid not only of flying, but of dying. So the Krupniks leave Anastasia and her brother with a sitter, and she must face her fears and problems without her parents for several days. Determined to become a journalist, Anastasia believes she should have "all the answers," and is dismayed to discover things do not always go her way. She's humiliated in gym class because she's the only one who can't climb the ropes, and, upon her parent's return, her plan to fix up her newly single Uncle George with her friend Daphne's divorced mother falls flat. But in a hilarious ending that only Anastasia could set in motion, she not only puts things right, but realizes that a lot of people consider her very special. Funny and touching, this new book is every bit as lively and touching as Lowry's first five, and definitely another winner.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Grade 5-8 Humiliated by her inability to climb a rope in gym class, 13-year-old Anastasia schemes to overcome the obstacle and impress her beautiful lady gym teacher, on whom she has a crush. Counterpoints to the plot are Anastasia's matchmaking efforts on behalf of a newly widowed uncle and a friend's mother, her struggle to make a smarmy recitation come alive and her attempt to view life as a journalist. In fact, each chapter begins humorously with Anastasia's efforts to make the day's events fit into "WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE WHY," somehow , nonetheless , reading in the style of the National Enquirer . The language in Lowry's stories about Anastasia is always natural, but . . . Answers also benefits from this stylistic variation. The surrounding characters, from baby brother Sam playing funeral on the floor to bereaved "Clark Gablish" Uncle George are colorful and quirky and distinct. Anastasia manages, with some help from her mother, to resolve the rope conflict. The story's other elements fall, quite literally, into their own likely and lively places. Not only does Anastasia have the answers, but she's also at the top of her form. Carolyn Noah, Worcester Public Library, Mass.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 9 and up
  
• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Yearling (June 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440400872
• ISBN-13: 978-0440400875
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 0.4 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,166,025 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lois Lowry is known for her versatility and invention as a writer. She was born in Hawaii and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan. After several years at Brown University, she turned to her family and to writing. She is the author of more than thirty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader.s Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, NUMBER THE STARS and THE GIVER. Her first novel, A SUMMER TO DIE, was awarded the International Reading Association.s Children.s Book Award. Ms. Lowry now divides her time between Cambridge and an 1840s farmhouse in Maine. To learn more about Lois Lowry, see her website at www.loislowry.com

author interview
A CONVERSATION WITH LOIS LOWRY ABOUT THE GIVER

Q. When did you know you wanted to become a writer?

A. I cannot remember ever not wanting to be a writer.

Q. What inspired you to write The Giver?

A. Kids always ask what inspired me to write a particular book or how did I get an idea for a particular book, and often it's very easy to answer that because books like the Anastasia books come from a specific thing; some little event triggers an idea. But a book like The Giver is a much more complicated book, and therefore it comes from much more complicated places--and many of them are probably things that I don't even recognize myself anymore, if I ever did. So it's not an easy question to answer.

I will say that the whole concept of memory is one that interests me a great deal. I'm not sure why that is, but I've always been fascinated by the thought of what memory is and what it does and how it works and what we learn from it. And so I think probably that interest of my own and that particular subject was the origin, one of many, of The Giver.

Q. How did you decide what Jonas should take on his journey?

A. Why does Jonas take what he does on his journey? He doesn't have much time when he sets out. He originally plans to make the trip farther along in time, and he plans to prepare for it better. But then, because of circumstances, he has to set out in a very hasty fashion. So what he chooses is out of necessity. He takes food because he needs to survive. He takes the bicycle because he needs to hurry and the bike is faster than legs. And he takes the baby because he is going out to create a future. And babies always represent the future in the same way children represent the future to adults. And so Jonas takes the baby so the baby's life will be saved, but he takes the baby also in order to begin again with a new life.

Q. When you wrote the ending, were you afraid some readers would want more details or did you want to leave the ending open to individual interpretation?

A. Many kids want a more specific ending to The Giver. Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I don't do that. And the reason is because The Giver is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. So I don't want to put my own feelings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people who create their own endings in their minds.

Q. Is it an optimistic ending? Does Jonas survive?

A. I will say that I find it an optimistic ending. How could it not be an optimistic ending, a happy ending, when that house is there with its lights on and music is playing? So I'm always kind of surprised and disappointed when some people tell me that they think the boy and the baby just die. I don't think they die. What form their new life takes is something I like people to figure out for themselves. And each person will give it a different ending. I think they're out there somewhere and I think that their life has changed and their life is happy, and I would like to think that's true for the people they left behind as well.

Q. In what way is your book Gathering Blue a companion to The Giver?

A. Gathering Blue postulates a world of the future, as The Giver does. I simply created a different kind of world, one that had regressed instead of leaping forward technologically as the world of The Giver has. It was fascinating to explore the savagery of such a world. I began to feel that maybe it coexisted with Jonas's world . . . and that therefore Jonas could be a part of it in a tangential way. So there is a reference to a boy with light eyes at the end of Gathering Blue. He can be Jonas or not, as you wish.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Book For Children Everywhere!, June 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Anastasia Has the Answers (Turtleback)

Lois Lowry has done it again! This book is a great influence for kids everywhere. Its like "The Little Engine That Could" only more exciting and funny. This Book Is EXCELLENT!!

4.0 out of 5 stars GREAT BOOK, June 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Anastasia Has the Answers (Paperback)

I think this book is great if you like all the other Anistatia books. I couldn't help giggle at the suprising ending!

0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Really not as good as the rest, March 31, 2011

By 

E. S. Charpentier (Brainerd, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anastasia Has the Answers (Paperback)

Anastasia decidedly does not have the answers. Anastasia's Aunt Rose dies, which is dealt with rather insensitively and cavalierly by both the author and her characters, and Uncle George comes to stay with the Krupniks for a while. Anastasia wastes no time in trying to set him up with eligible females. Another subplot to the story is that most of the females Anastasia knows are man-less, something Anastasia sees as quite the travesty. For such a notably humanist author, this is a rather sexist worldview. The final thread of the story is that Anastasia is incapable of climbing a rope in gym class. This is prominent on the cover of every edition of this book, but largely a non-story. Anastasia can't climb a rope. She practices quite a lot, then learns to climb the rope. Obviously.
Really, as much as I like the Anastasia books, I was not pleased with this one at all.