A Review of Lois Lowry's "Anastasia Krupnik"

Anastasia Krupnik is a ten year old girl who is trying to decide a lot of things, all at the same time. This story begins when she decides to write a different type of poem than the kind her teacher, Mrs. Westvessel is looking for and gets an F as her grade. She comes home and writes in her green notebook a list of, THINGS I HATE and puts her teacher's name under it. Later at dinner she tells her parents about the poem and her father, who as it happens is a poet, tells her she needs some extra letters after that F in fact the letters A-B-U-L-O-U-S and Anastasia is astounded that she wrote such a good poem. In this short novel she has many little adventures such as this one, including whether she is in love with an obnoxious 6th grade boy named Washburn Cummings, and whether she wants to become a Christian. However all through her adventures the story's main plot is that her parents are having a baby, without telling Anastasia!!! Anastasia is furious, and to calm her down her father tells her that she will be allowed to name the baby anything she wants. Another story I must mention is her grandmother coming over at Thanksgiving. Anastasia doesn’t like her much because she is so old and can’t remember anything. A brief conversation with her is all it takes to make Anastasia feel very sad and loving to her grandmother. At the closing of the story Anastasia’s grandmother dies in her 90’s and the baby is born. Anastasia, who planned to name the baby a terrible name, decides to name the baby Sam, after her grandmother’s husband. This is a great book and there are other books about Anastasia and her little brother Sam. A wonderful book.


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