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Reasons to Love Anastasia Krupnik

....Lois Lowry won big prizes for The Giver and Number the Stars....and that is fine. But I prefer Anastasia. A few thoughts...

1 ....Anastasia is an artist in training. Like Anne Frank, Anastasia simply takes notes. She does not worry about being profound. She wonders why she dislikes her teacher...who...I think....has a hairy mole. Anastasia proudly acquires new words. She becomes absorbed in the story of her parents ....the story of their romantic careers. Her mother speaks candidly about the friendly lawyer whose vision of the future simply did not line up with a bohemian life. Anastasia studies her dad’s poetry and learns that a broken heart is good for output. So true...and how many other kiddie books will tell you this?

2 ....like Tomie DePaola....Anastasia will learn that teachers are not infallible. Anastasia writes a good poem and it is not seen as such. And that is life.  

3 ....Anastasia keeps a journal of her likes and dislikes....which seems like a small thing. But I am happy to see this level of self-reflection in a kiddo protagonist.

4 ....Anastasia falls in love and struggles to understand the rules of adult life. The experience of holding down a job. A day job will inevitably be messy....because jobs mean interacting with people....and by definition people are messy. 

5 ....Anastasia attends her father’s class at Harvard and struggles to understand adolescent ennui. Wordsworth is invoked.  Bad language is used and pondered...What makes it bad? Anastasia studies the bad blood between her father and his acolytes...Are the teens entirely to blame? Could the poet alter his teaching?  It is difficult to see your own parent struggling....and that is life. In these books...issues concerning adult frailty are not papered over.

Long live Anastasia. Just a reminder that these weird and smart novels exist in the world.... 


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