January 4 feature: Anastasia Krupnik

Lois Lowry is a talented author who has published many books for young readers. One of my favorites when I was 11 was Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye. Somehow, I missed reading the Anastasia Krupnik series. I truly enjoyed making up for this lapse some 20+ years later. Anastasia is a 10-year-old girl, daughter of a poet father and an artist mother. She keeps track of her likes and dislikes in her green notebook, always reserving the right to change her mind. Anastasia's struggle to understand her elderly grandmother suffering from dementia and her feelings about a coming baby are handled with tenderness and strike a nice balance. However, the chapter on Anastasia wanting to become a Catholic left me wishing that Lowry would have treated the subject of faith in God differently. Lowry's greatest accomplishment is that she remembers what it's like to be 10 years old.