Lois Lowry

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Lois Lowry

• The Importance of Human Connections

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Meeting Lowry

• (Click here for a video interview)

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Early literature impressions

• From a young age, Lowry enjoyed literature and
  entertainment
• On the next slide is the poem she memorized as a
  young girl
• It moves quickly, but take notice of the length

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THANATOPSISby William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

• To him who in the love of Nature holds
• Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
• A various language for his gayer hours
• She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
• And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
• Into his darker musings, with a mild
• And healing sympathy, that steals away
• Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
• Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
• Over thy spirit, and sad images
• Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
• And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
• Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart--
• Go forth, under the open sky, and list
• To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
• Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
• Comes a still voice--Yet a few days, and thee
• The all-beholding sun shall see no more
• In all his course nor yet in the cold ground,

And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go To mix
for ever with the elements, To be a brother to
the insensible rock, And to the sluggish clod,
which the rude swain Turns with his share, and
treads upon. The oak Shall send his roots
abroad, and pierce thy mould. Yet not to thine
eternal resting-place Shalt thou retire alone,
nor couldst thou wish Couch more magnificent.
Thou shalt lie down With patriarchs of the
infant world--with kings, The powerful of the
earth--the wise, the good, Fair forms, and hoary
seers of ages past, All in one mighty sepulchre.
The hills Rock-ribb'd and ancient as the
sun,--the vales Stretching in pensive quietness
between The venerable woods rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green and, pour'd round
all, Old Ocean's grey and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all Of the great
tomb of man. The golden sun, The planets, all
the infinite host of heaven, Are shining on the
sad abodes of death, Through the still lapse of
ages. All that tread The globe are but a handful
to the tribes That slumber in its bosom.--Take
the wings Of morning, pierce the Barcan
wilderness, Or lose thyself in the continuous
woods Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend Take
note of thy departure? All that breathe Will
share thy destiny. The gay will laugh When thou
art gone, the solemn brood of care Plod on, and
each one as before will chase His favourite
phantom yet all these shall leave Their mirth
and their employments, and shall come And make
their bed with thee. As the long train Of ages
glides away, the sons of men, The youth in
life's green spring, and he who goes In the full
strength of years, matron and maid, The
speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side By
those who in their turn shall follow them.   So
live, that when thy summons comes to join The
innumerable caravan which moves To that
mysterious realm where each shall take His
chamber in the silent halls of death, Thou go
not, like the quarry-slave at night, Scourged by
his dungeon but, sustain'd and soothed By an
unfaltering trust, approach thy grave, Like one
who wraps the drapery of his couch About him,
and lies down to pleasant dreams.
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Biographical Information

• Lois Lowry was born 1937,
• She was a child in a military family, born in
  Territory of Hawaii. She then moved with her
  family to Pennsylvania, Tokyo, and New York.
• She originally intended to write for adults, but
  was convinced by her editor to pursue adolescent
  novels.
• Lowry never wanted to teach children, she just
  happens to connect with young adult audiences.

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Inspirations for Work

• Lowry has explored many human connections in her
  writing. She uses personal experiences as well
  as historical events for inspiration
• Her own loss of a sibling in A Summer to Die,
• Adolescent struggles for the Anastasia Krupnik
  series,
• Holocaust experience for Number the Stars, and
• Societal Discord inspired The Giver.

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A Summer to Die

• Deals with themes of loss, sibling differences,
  ect.
• Roman a clef of Lowrys younger life.
• Captures the duality of personalities within a
  family and life vs. death
• A Summer to Die, my first book, was a highly
  fictionalized retelling of the early death of
  mysister, and of the effect of such a loss on a
  family.

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Anastasia Series

• Lowry has published many books chronicling the
  life times of her character Anastasia Krupnik,
  they include
• Anastasia Krupnik
• Anastasia Again!
• Anastasia at Your Service
• Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst
• Anastasia on Her Own
• Anastasia has the Answers
• Anastasias Chosen Career
• Anastasia at this Address
• Anastasia Absolutely

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Holocaust Review

• During the 1930s, two-thirds of Europes Jewish
  population was slaughtered which calculates to
  one-third of the world population of Jews.
• In addition, the Nazis genocide exterminated
  millions of
• http//www.holocaust-history.org/

Gypsies, Soviets, Polish citizens, Catholics,
homosexuals, handicapped, alcoholics,
political and religious dissidents and Jehovah
Witnesses.
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Holocaust Review

• There were over 1.5 million children exterminated
  during the Holocaust.
• Over 5 million Non-Jewish Victims were
  exterminated by the Nazis during the Holocaust. 3
  million of those victims were Poles and
  Catholics.
• Imagine the potential of those lives...

Imagine how many might have been another Albert
Einstein, a Sigmund Freud
http//www.holocaust-history.org/
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Poetic Perspective

• First they came for the Jews and I did not
  speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they
  came for the communists and I did not speak out
  because I was not a communist. Then they came
  for the trade unionists and I did not speak out
  because I was not a trade unionist. Then they
  came for me and by then there was no one left
  to speak out for me.  
• Rev. Martin Niemoller

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Number the Stars

• Number the Stars tells the tale of Annemarie
  Johansen, a young girl living in Denmark during
  World War II. The book opens in 1943, three years
  after German soldiers first arrived to occupy the
  small country.
• Number the Stars, set in a different culture and
  era, tells the same story that of the role we
  humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.

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Social Unrest from 1960s-1990s

• What can you, as a class, explain about the
• Changes in values
• Household construction
• Major movements of the 1960s-1970s?

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Another perspective on Utopian Living

• Not in Utopia -- subterranean fields,--
• Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!
• But in the very world, which is the world
• Of all of us, -- the place where in the end
• We find our happiness, or not at all
• William Wordsworth

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The Giver

• Themes coming of age story, uniqueness,utopia
  vs. dystopia, unity vs. individuality
• Relevance to YA readersThe Giver (and
  Gathering Blue, and the newest in the trilogy
  Messenger) take place against the background of
  very different cultures and times. Though all
  three are broader in scope than my earlier books,
  they nonetheless speak to the same concern the
  vital need of people to be aware of their
  interdependence, not only with each other, but
  with the world and its environment.

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Lowry on Lowry

• My books have varied in content and style. Yet
  it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with
  the same general theme the importance of human
  connections.

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Challenged Books

• The Giver is one of the most popular books on the
  challenged list of the American Library
  Association.
• Why do you think this is?

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Writing Tips from Lowry

• Write about personal events, experiences that
  have shaped you
• Create your own situations, characters, etc.
• Read!
• Write letters (old fashioned ones)

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Directions for Daily Writing Assignment

• Pick a personal experience or historical event to
  focus on for this writing
• Begin your narrative as if you are writing a
  letter to a friend or grandparent
• Turn in your work (no less than1 ½ pages) at the
  end of the hour.