Anastasia at This Address [Turtleback]

Lois Lowry (Author)

Product Details

• Turtleback
• Publisher: Demco Media (August 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0606008535
• ISBN-13: 978-0606008532
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)

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

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Wonderful Addition!, April 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Anastasia at this Address (Anastasia Krupnik) (Paperback)

Anastasia, like some people, like reading the "Personals" section. Anastasia thinks she will never find the person she has been dreaming of unless she reads this section. And luck - a Single White Male is looking for some tall woman who loves Caribbean evenings and reruns of Casablanca - although she has never been to the Caribbean - she is tall, and loves Casablanca. She writes letters to this person often until he wants to meet her. She feels as if she will humiliate herself, and when she goes to her friend's sister's wedding, she gets a surprise of her life.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A little scary in today's world..., December 16, 2006

By 

Joanna Mechlinski (CT, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Anastasia at this Address (Anastasia Krupnik) (Paperback)

Although I read and loved the "Anastasia Krupnik" books while growing up, I have to say that I wouldn't recommend this one...

Essentially, 13-year-old Anastasia spots a personals section at the back of a magazine, and decides to write to a 28-year-old man. She takes care not to outright lie, although she certainly omits and stretches many things about herself...most importantly, that she is an eighth-grader.

The two correspond for some time, until Anastasia's new friend tells her he will be coming to Boston for a family wedding and wants to meet her. Since he has her address, Anastasis is in a blind panic, desperate to get rid of him but not knowing how.

Because this book is part of the "Anastasia" series, the situation manages to resolve itself without much damage. However, that isn't exactly a realistic message to convey to today's adolescents, especially given all the already-existing problems with misrepresentation on MySpace and other internet sites. Things may have been a bit different twenty years ago, when this series first came out; but today, Lowry could do better to teach girls that it is NEVER okay to misrepresent themselves to strangers, especially ones older than themselves. Not everyone in such a situation - having hinted at wanting a romance and giving out her real address - will be so lucky.

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Book, February 20, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Anastasia at this Address (Anastasia Krupnik) (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite books that i have read. A lot of people would like this book if they are girls. Anastasia is trying to have a fabolous summer and trying to find a boyfriend. Anastasia goes to a wedding and later finds out that the penpal or boyfriend she is writing to turns out at the wedding and he is driving her nuts. Find out what is ging to happen in the reat of the book. READ IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!