Lois Lowry
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SAL Presents

Lois Lowry

Past Event: Saturday, March 15, 2008

At Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

Sponsored by Reed, Longyear, Malnati & Ahrens, PLLC.

Humiliation, sibling rivalry, crushes, religion, death, moving, making new friends, boredom, independence, money, peer pressure, career decisions, identity: these are the trials and tribulations of young adulthood. In her more than thirty novels, Lois Lowry lays it all on the table with humor and honesty. Growing up is not easy.

Capturing these realities without condescension or gloss, Lowry writes as an adult with an honest understanding of adolescent feeling. She maintains a position of humor and empathy in everything from losing loved ones to finding one’s sense of self and becoming part of a community. There is no heavy-handed messaging, no I-told-you-so attitude. Sometimes, the parent characters even admit to being, well, wrong.

Ten of Lowry’s novels focus on Anastasia Krupnik and her family. Set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the young Anastasia’s adventures are bold and sometimes defiant. In other books, Lowry takes on heavier themes: Number the Stars, set in Copenhagen during the 1943 Nazi Reign of Terror, charts the friendship of two girls, one Jewish, one Christian, and the courageous Danish Christians who risked their lives to save nearly all of Denmark’s 7,000 Jews. In The Giver, 12-year-old Jonas lives in a perfect, frightening dystopia, faces a moral dilemma, and must make an important choice. Her latest book, The Willoughbys, is a deliciously wicked homage to children’s literature—a tale replete with hilarious stock characters: abandoned baby, ruthless parents, long-lost heir, kindly benefactor and no-nonsense nanny.

The middle of three children, Lowry gained much of her understanding of sibling rivalry, friendship, and loss from her own life. Her father, an Army dentist, moved the family frequently, from Hawaii to New York, Pennsylvania, Tokyo, and Washington, D.C. all in Lowry’s growing-up years. Her sister, Helen, died when she was 28, a loss that informed the novel A Summer to Die and the sister’s death in Number the Stars. Lowry dropped out of Brown University to marry a Naval officer at the age of 19 and moved between six states for the next twenty years, having four children and eventually finishing college and graduate school at the University of Southern Maine. At the age of 40, she divorced her husband and moved back to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she pursued her writing career in full. Since then, she has received the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader’s Medal, and the Mark Twain Award, two Newbery Medals for Number the Stars and The Giver, and the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award for A Summer to Die.

Excerpt from The Willoughbys (2008)
Let us turn our attention, now, to a mansion some distance away from the Willoughbys’ tall, thin house. This is the Melanoff mansion, on the porch of which the Willoughby children had not long ago left a baby in a basket.

Mr. Melanoff—called Commander Melanoff for no particular reason except that he liked the sound of it—lived in squalor. Squalor is a situation in which there is moldy food in the refrigerator, mouse droppings are everywhere, the wastebaskets are overflowing because they have not been emptied in weeks, and the washing machine stopped working months before—wet clothes within becoming moldy—but a repairman has never been summoned. There is a very bad smell to squalor.

Squalor has nothing to do with money. Squalor happens when people are sad. And Commander Melanoff was very sad.

He had made a vast fortune by manufacturing candy bars. His factory still existed, and the money kept coming in because people bought his hugely successful confections by the millions. But Commander Melanoff never went to his office anymore. He stayed in his squalorous mansion, where he moped and sulked…

He was sad because he had lost his wife. He had not actually been very fond of her. But it was sad, nonetheless, to be wifeless. She had been a dull but tidy and meticulous lady who had kept the house in perfect—almost too perfect—order. The commander’s true, deep, unending sadness was because he had lost his only child, a small boy, while mother and son had been enjoying, without him, what had promised to be a lovely holiday.

Selected Work
A Summer to Die (1977)
Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye (1978)
Anastasia Krupnik (1979)
Autumn Street (1980)
Anastasia Again! (1981)
Anastasia At Your Service (1982)
The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline (1983)
Taking Care of Terrific (1983)
Us and Uncle Fraud (1984)
Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst (1984)
Anastasia On Her Own (1985)
Switcharound (1985)
Anastasia Has the Answers (1986)
Rabble Starkey (1987)
Anastasia’s Chosen Career (1987)
All About Sam (1988)
Number the Stars (1989)
Your Move, J.P.! (1990)
Anastasia At This Address (1991)
Attaboy Sam! (1992)
The Giver (1993)
Anastasia Absolutely (1995)
See You Around, Sam! (1996)
Stay! Keeper’s Story (1997)
Looking Back (Autobiography) (1998)
Zooman Sam (1999)
Gathering Blue (2000)
Gooney Bird Greene (2002)
The Silent Boy (2003)
Messenger (2004)
Gooney Bird and the Room Mother (2006)
Gossamer (2006)
Gooney the Fabulous (2007)
The Willoughbys (2008)

Links
The author’s website
Bio on Scholastic.com
Lois Lowry interviewed by Linda M. Castellitto

Event Details

Town Hall Seattle—The Great Hall

1119 8th Ave
Seattle, WA 98101

View directions.

Transportation & Parking

Town Hall Seattle is centrally located at 1119 8th Ave, on the corner of 8th and Seneca. Their venue is served by frequent bus routes, is near access to light rail stations, and close to a number of parking options nearby. Please see their website for more details.

Accessibility

Open Captioning is an option for people who have hearing losses, where a captioning screen displaying the words that are spoken or sung is placed on stage. To make a request for open captioning, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10. Please note: for in-person events at Town Hall Seattle, we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure captioning services. 

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Assistive Listening Devices (ALDs) are devices that people with hearing loss use in conjunction with their hearing device (hearing aids or cochlear implants). Town Hall Seattle has a hearing loop system, so you can switch your T-coil hearing aid to telecoil to have the stage’s microphones transmitted directly to your hearing aids. To pick up a headset, check in with any Town Hall usher when you arrive.

Sign Language Interpretation is available upon request for Deaf, DeafBlind, and hard of hearing individuals. To make a request for interpretation, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Sign Language Interpretation” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process and we will contact you to confirm details. Please note: we appreciate a two-week advance notice to allow us time to secure interpretation.

Wheelchair Accessible Seating and Accessible Restrooms are available in all sections at Town Hall Seattle, which is fully accessible to ticket holders with physical mobility concerns. Town Hall Seattle recommends that visitors use the 8th Avenue Entrance for events in the Great Hall, and elevators with Braille signage go to all levels within the Hall. The venue has all-gender, ADA-accessible restrooms on the lobby and Forum level. To reserve seating for a specific mobility concern, please contact us at [email protected] or 206.621.2230×10, or select “Wheelchair Accessible or Alternative Seating Options” during ticket checkout, and we will contact you to confirm details. For more details on accessibility features at Town Hall, click here.

Guide and service dogs are welcome.

All-gender restrooms are available.

We are pleased to offer these accessibility services at our venues, and they are provided at no additional cost to ticket holders. Please contact us with any questions and feedback about how we can be more accessible and inclusive. Our Patron Services Manager is available at [email protected], or Monday-Friday from 10:00am – 5:00pm at 206.621.2230×10.

For more accessibility information, please head to lectures.org/accessibility. If you would like to make accessibility arrangements you do not see listed here, please contact our box office or select “Other Accommodations” from the Accessibility section during your ticket checkout process, and we will contact you to confirm details.