Lois Lowry


Lois Lowry is an American writer. She is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Giver Quartet and Number the Stars. She is known for writing about difficult subject matters and complex themes in works for young audiences.
Lowry has won two Newbery Medals: for Number the Stars in 1990 and The Giver in 1994. Her book Gooney Bird Greene won the 2002 Rhode Island Children's Book Award.

Personal life

Lowry was born on March 20, 1937, in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, to parents Katherine Gordon Landis and Robert E. Hammersberg. Initially, Lowry's parents named her "Cena" for her Norwegian grandmother but upon hearing this, her grandmother telegraphed and instructed Lowry's parents that the child should have an American name.
Lowry was the middle child, with an older sister, Helen, and a younger brother, Jon. Helen died of cancer in 1962, but Lowry and her brother still share a close relationship.
Lowry's father had a career as an Army dentist whose work moved the family all over the United States and to many parts of the world. Lowry and her family moved from Hawaii to Brooklyn, New York, in 1939 when Lowry was two years old. They relocated in 1942 to her mother's hometown, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when Lowry's father was deployed to the Pacific during World War II.
Following World War II, Lowry and her family moved to Tokyo, Japan, where her father was stationed from 1948–1950. Lowry went through junior high school at a school for the children of military families, The American School in Japan, and then returned to the United States to attend high school. Lowry and her family briefly lived in Carlisle again in 1950 before moving to Governors Island, New York, where Lowry attended Curtis High School on Staten Island. She began attending Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, New York, in 1952, and graduated in 1954 before beginning attendance at Brown University.
Lowry continued at the school for two years, departing after her marriage to Donald Grey Lowry, a U.S. Navy officer, in 1956. Together, they had four children: daughters Alix and Kristin, and sons Grey and Benjamin.
While raising her children, Lowry completed her degree in English literature at the University of Southern Maine in Portland in 1972. After earning her B.A., she continued at the school to pursue graduate studies.
In 1977, at the age of 40, Lowry had her first book, "A Summer to Die", published. She and Donald Lowry divorced that same year.
Lowry's son Grey, a USAF major, was killed in the crash of his fighter plane in 1995. Lowry has acknowledged that this was the most difficult day of her life, and of his death she has said, "His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth."
Today, Lois Lowry has homes in both Massachusetts and Maine and remains an active writer and speaker.

Writing career

Lowry began her career as a freelance journalist. In the 1970s, she submitted a short story to Redbook magazine, which was intended for adult audiences but written from a child's perspective. An editor at Houghton Mifflin then suggested to Lowry that she write a children's book. Lowry agreed and wrote A Summer to Die which Houghton Mifflin published in 1977 when she was 40 years old. The book has themes of terminal illness, based on Lowry's own experiences with her sister Helen. Lowry continued to write about difficult topics in her next publication, Autumn Street, which explores themes of coping with racism, grief, and fear at a young age. The novel is told from the perspective of a young girl who is sent to live with her grandfather during World War II, based on by Lowry's own experiences during the war.
The same year she published Autumn Street, Lowry also published her novel Anastasia Krupnik, the first installment in the Anastasia series. The series continued until 1995.
Lowry's work Number the Stars was published in 1989, and received multiple awards, including the 1990 Newbery medal. Lowry received the Newbery medal again in 1994, for The Giver. After writing The Giver, she published two companion novels which take place in the same universe: Gathering Blue and Messenger. In 2012, she published Son, which tied all three of the previous books together. As a set, they are considered The Giver Quartet.

Critical reception

In her works, Lowry has explored such complex issues as racism, terminal illness, murder, the Holocaust, and the questioning of authority, among other challenging topics. Her writing on such matters has brought her both praise and criticism. In particular, The Giver has been met with a diversity of reactions from schools in America since its release in 1993; some schools have adopted it as a part of the mandatory curriculum, while others have prohibited the book's inclusion in classroom studies.

Awards

Lowry won the Newbery Medal in 1990 for her novel Number the Stars, and again in 1994 for The Giver. For Number the Stars, Lowry has also received the National Jewish Book Award in 1990, in the Children's Literature category, and the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award in 1991.
In 1994, Lowry was awarded the Regina Medal.
In 2004, her book Gooney Bird Greene won the Rhode Island Children's Book
Lowry has been nominated three times for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books. She was a finalist in 2000, a U.S. nominee in 2004, and a finalist in 2016.
In 2007, she received the Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association for her contributions writing for teens. The ALA Margaret Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature". Lowry won the annual award in 2007 for The Giver. The citation observed that "The Giver was one of the most frequently challenged books from 1990–2000" — that is, the object of "a formal, written attempt to remove a book from a library or classroom." According to the panel chair, "The book has held a unique position in teen literature. Lowry's exceptional use of metaphors and subtle complexity make it a book that will be discussed, debated and challenged for years to come...a perfect teen read."
In 2011 she gave the May Hill Arbuthnot Lecture; her lecture was titled "UNLEAVING: The Staying Power of Gold". She was also awarded an honorary Doctorate of Letters by Brown University in 2014.
In addition, she holds honorary degrees from The University of Southern Maine, Elmhurst College, Wilson College, St. Mary's College, and Lesley University.

Works

Children's book series

;The Giver Quartet
;Anastasia
;Sam Krupnik
;Tate Family
;Gooney Bird