Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry (born Lois Ann Hammersberg, 20 March 1937) is an American author of more than forty books for children and young adults whose work ranges from lighthearted contemporary realism to searing dystopian fiction. She is one of only seven authors to have won the Newbery Medal twice — for Number the Stars (1990), a novel about the Danish resistance’s rescue of Jews during the Holocaust, and for The Giver (1993), a dystopian novel about a society that has eliminated pain, colour, music, and memory. The Giver is one of the most assigned, most discussed, and most banned books in American education, and its influence on young adult dystopian fiction — from The Hunger Games to Divergent — is incalculable.

Early Life

Lowry was born in Honolulu to a military family and spent her childhood moving between Hawaii, Pennsylvania, and Japan. Her father was a career Army officer, and the family’s frequent relocations made her a voracious reader and an acute observer of new social environments. She attended Brown University, married at nineteen, had four children, and returned to complete her degree at the University of Southern Maine in her thirties. She began writing professionally in the mid-1970s after her children were in school.

Early Fiction

Lowry’s first novel, A Summer to Die (1977), draws on the death of her older sister Helen from cancer and established the emotional directness that characterises her best work. Anastasia Krupnik (1979) launched a beloved series of ten novels about an intelligent, witty, slightly eccentric ten-year-old girl navigating family life in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Anastasia books are among the finest examples of middle-grade realistic fiction — sharply observed, genuinely funny, and respectful of their young protagonist’s inner life.

Autumn Street (1980) is a more serious autobiographical novel about a young girl’s experience during World War II, including the murder of a friend. Rabble Starkey (1987), about a girl growing up in Appalachian poverty, won multiple awards.

Number the Stars (1989)

Lowry’s first Newbery Medal winner tells the story of ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen, whose family helps smuggle her Jewish best friend out of Copenhagen during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The novel is based on the true story of the Danish resistance’s rescue of nearly the entire Danish Jewish population in October 1943 — one of the few successful acts of mass civilian resistance during the Holocaust.

The novel is remarkable for its restraint. Lowry tells the story from a child’s perspective without sentimentalising it. Annemarie’s courage is convincing precisely because it is mixed with fear, confusion, and incomprehension. The novel has been continuously in print since publication and is one of the most widely used novels in American elementary education.

The Giver (1993)

The Giver is set in a future community that has achieved “Sameness” — a state of social harmony purchased by eliminating colour, music, genuine emotion, sexual desire, and individual memory. The community assigns roles, controls reproduction, and “releases” (euthanises) the elderly, the disabled, and any infant that fails to thrive. Twelve-year-old Jonas is assigned the role of “Receiver of Memory” — the one person in the community who holds the memories of the world before Sameness — and discovers what his society has sacrificed for its painless order.

The novel’s power lies in its premise: the community is not obviously evil. Its members are kind, polite, and genuinely concerned for each other’s welfare. The horror accumulates gradually as Jonas — and the reader — realises that this kindness is purchased at the cost of everything that makes human life meaningful.

The Giver has sold over twelve million copies and is consistently among the most challenged books in American libraries, objected to for its treatment of euthanasia, suicide, sexuality, and its perceived undermining of family values. It won the Newbery Medal in 1994.

The Giver Quartet

Lowry extended the world of The Giver in three companion novels: Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012). Each is set in a different community within the same fictional universe and explores different aspects of the tension between security and freedom, conformity and individuality. Son brings the four narratives together in a conclusion that is more hopeful — and more conventionally fantastical — than the ambiguous ending of The Giver.

Other Notable Works

The Willoughbys (2008) is a darkly comic parody of classic children’s literature — Lowry’s sly commentary on the conventions of the orphan-adventure genre from Dickens to Roald Dahl. Gossamer (2006) is a quiet, lyrical fantasy about dream-givers. On the Horizon (2020), a book of poems about the bombing of Hiroshima and Pearl Harbor, reflects Lowry’s childhood in Hawaii and Japan.

Critical Standing

Lowry’s reputation rests primarily on The Giver and Number the Stars, both of which are firmly established in the canon of American children’s literature. The Giver is particularly significant for its role in the development of young adult dystopian fiction — it preceded the genre’s commercial explosion by nearly two decades and influenced virtually every YA dystopia that followed.

Her realistic fiction — particularly the Anastasia books and Rabble Starkey — is underrated. She writes about children with genuine respect for their emotional and intellectual complexity, without condescension and without the earnest pedagogical undertone that weakens much children’s literature.

Collecting Lowry

The Giver (1993, Houghton Mifflin) in first edition with dust jacket brings $200–$500. Number the Stars (1989, Houghton Mifflin) is somewhat less expensive. The Anastasia series first editions are affordable. Signed copies are available, as Lowry has been an active presence at literary festivals and school events throughout her career.