Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry (born March 20, 1937, Honolulu, Hawaii) American author who wrote some 50 books, mainly directed toward young adults, beginning in the 1970s. By the early 1990s she had solidified her reputation by winning two Newbery Medals, awarded for the most distinguished children’s book of the year. On her website, Lowry described the major themes of her books: “I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another.”

Early life

Lowry was born Lois Hammersberg and grew up as the middle child of three. She had an elder sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Jon. Her mother, Katherine Landis, was a kindergarten teacher, and her father, Robert E. Hammersberg, was an army dentist. His profession required the family to move often. Although Lois Hammersberg was born in Honolulu, she also lived in Brooklyn. In 1942, the year after the U.S. entered World War II, her father was called to duty, and she, her siblings, and her mother moved to Carlisle, Pennsylvania, where her grandparents lived. Thanks to her voracious appetite for reading, she was able to skip the first grade. She knew early on that she wanted to become a writer. Three years after the war ended in 1945, she and her family moved to Tokyo, and they returned to the United States in 1950.

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After graduating from high school in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, Lois Hammersberg enrolled at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, in 1954. There she met Donald Grey Lowry, a naval officer. In 1956 Hammersberg quit school and married him (they divorced in 1977). She took his name and traveled the country as his job required. They lived in California, Connecticut, Florida, South Carolina, Massachusetts, and Maine and had two daughters, Alix and Kristin, and two sons, Grey and Benjamin. Meanwhile, Lois Lowry’s sister, who was only in her 20s, was diagnosed with cancer and died in 1962.

First books and the Anastasia series

As Lowry’s children grew older, she was able to resume her studies. She received a B.A. degree in English literature from the University of Southern Maine, Portland, in 1972 and completed some postgraduate work at the same school. Lowry began her career as a freelance journalist and soon turned to writing books, her lifelong dream. Her first juvenile novel, A Summer to Die (1977), loosely mirrors the author’s experience of losing her sister, as it tells the story of a teenage girl dealing with her sibling’s leukemia. It was a success, winning the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award. Lowry continued to weave bits of her past into other works of fiction, including Autumn Street (1980), which follows a U.S. Army officer’s daughter who moves in with her grandparents during World War II.

Anastasia Krupnik (1979) marked the debut of one of Lowry’s most enduring characters. Based in part on Lowry’s daughters, the protagonist is a precocious preteen who wants to be a writer. Several sequels followed, including Anastasia Again! (1981), Anastasia’s Chosen Career (1987), and Anastasia, Absolutely (1995). Anastasia’s younger brother takes centre stage in All About Sam (1988), See You Around, Sam! (1996), and others.

The Newbery Medal for Number the Stars and The Giver

In 1990 Lowry won her first Newbery Medal, for Number the Stars (1989), an account of a young girl and her family helping Jewish neighbours escape Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943. Lowry’s second Newbery came in 1994, for The Giver (1993), a novel about a futuristic world without social ills and a 12-year-old boy who questions his seemingly perfect society.

Books of the 21st century

Lowry continued to write into the 21st century. Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012) complete the dystopian Giver quartet. Her Gooney Bird series, which includes such titles as Gooney Bird Greene (2002), Gooney, the Fabulous (2007), Gooney Bird on the Map (2011), and Gooney Bird and All Her Charms (2013), follows the life of a very unique second grader. Other works include The Silent Boy (2003), The Willoughbys (2008), Like the Willow Tree (2011), and The Windeby Puzzle (2023).

Memoirs and other works

Lowry also published Looking Back: A Book of Memories (1998), an inventive memoir that takes its cues from family photographs. It was revised and expanded in 2016. In 2020 she published On the Horizon: Memories of World War II, based on her recollections of living in Hawaii just before the Pearl Harbor attack (1941) and of residing in Tokyo a few years after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945). Lowry’s writing also includes literature textbooks and articles for magazines and newspapers, including The New York Times. In addition, she is recognized as an accomplished photographer, and her pictures appear in her own publications and those of others.