Author

Lois Lowry

b. 1937 · American children's author who won the Newbery Medal twice

About Lois Lowry

Lois Lowry (born 1937) was born Lois Hammersberg in Honolulu, the daughter of a U.S. Army dentist, and spent parts of her childhood in Pennsylvania, New York and Japan. She studied at Brown University, raised four children, completed a degree in English at the University of Southern Maine in 1972, and worked as a freelance writer and photographer before publishing her first novel, A Summer to Die, in 1977. She went on to write the Anastasia Krupnik books and many others, and is one of the few authors to have won the Newbery Medal twice: for Number the Stars (1990) and The Giver (1994).

Notable works

  • The Giver (1993)
  • Number the Stars (1989)
  • A Summer to Die (1977)
  • Anastasia Krupnik (1979)
  • Gathering Blue (2000)
  • Messenger (2004)
  • Son (2012)

On this site

Number the Stars

Lois Lowry

1989 · Postwar Contemporary · Novel

Number the Stars is set in Copenhagen and on the north coast of Zealand in September and October 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark. Ten-year-old Annemarie Johansen and her best friend Ellen Rosen race each other home from school and are stopped on the street by two German soldiers; Annemarie's little sister Kirsti, five, chatters at them fearlessly.

low medical relevanceFriendshipWar ViolenceHeroism
The Giver

Lois Lowry

1993 · Postwar Contemporary · Novel

Jonas is eleven and lives with his father, a Nurturer who cares for newborns, his mother, who holds an important post in the Department of Justice, and his younger sister Lily in a tidy, enclosed Community where nearly everything is decided for its citizens. Families are assigned, each with one son and one daughter; babies are born to Birthmothers and given out at the yearly December Ceremony; children receive bicycles at Nine and jobs at Twelve; precise language is enforced with public apologies; everyone takes a daily pill once the Stirrings of adolescent desire begin; and those who break the rules three times, the old, and newborns who fail to thrive are "released" to a vague Elsewhere.

medium medical relevanceUtopia / DystopiaMemory / TimeComing of Age