Not everyone is a list maker, but we all experience the things that Anastasia experiences– love, birth, and death. It is the combination of humor and reality that has allowed me to enjoy Anastasia both as a ten-year old and a forty-something year old. While the experiences of Anastasia are real and sometimes serious, Lowry uses humor to connect the reader and this young, freckle-faced girl. Do you remember when you were ten? How things would change from day-to-day? How you might struggle to understand what was going on in your world? Lois Lowry does such a great an impressive job of creating a real character, someone who really does exist, to some degree, in all of us, no matter what our age. Whether she’s mourning the disappearance of her wart or grappling with her grandmother’s dementia, you can see Anastasia’s life as a ten-year old over the course of a year in fifth grade. It is through Anastasia’s musings that we learn about the trials of being ten. On page fourteen, she keeps a list of things she loves and things she hates the items are always being updated. In fact, she has a green spiral notebook she keeps all of her lists in a list of words, beginnings of poems, and important events. She has a pet fish, Frank, and is about to become a big sister, something she is none too happy about realizes might be a wonderful thing. She is a bright, quirky ten-year old girl, the only daughter oldest child of a painter and a Harvard poetry professor. If you don’t know Anastasia, allow me to introduce her. But out of all those books, one is at the top of the list, Anastasia Krupnik by Lois Lowry.

These books now line a shelf in my guest room and hold a special place in my heart. Storylines that resonated with me, characters I connected with. There are a handful of books that I’ve kept from my childhood.

Lois lowry anastasia