Looking Back: A Book of Memories by Lois Lowry

From the Publisher

"I would like to introduce you to this book. It has no plot. It is about moments, memories, fragments, falsehoods, and fantasies. It is about things that happened, which caused other things to happen, so that eventually stories emerged." Children as well as adults often ask Lois Lowry where the ideas for her stories came from. In this fascinating, moving autobiography, the Newbery Medalist answers this and many other questions. Her writing often transports readers into her own world. She explores her rich history through family pictures, memories, and recollections of childhood friends. She details pivotal moments that affected her life, inspired her writing, and that magically evolved into rich and wonderful stories that one is reluctant to put down. Lowry fans, and anyone interested in the writing process, will tremendously enjoy this poignant trip through a remarkable writer's past.

Andrea Higbie

...[L]ife for Lowry, as for most everyone else, is never just one big happily-ever-after; there are bumps, dips, valleys...."Time goes on," she wrote in her very first novel, A Summer To Die, "and your life is still there, and you have to live it." —The New York Times Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Introducing each section of this memoir with an excerpt from one of her novels, the author "unfolds her history in a glorious arc, invisibly threading its parts into a unified whole. Her connection of the everyday details of her life to the larger scope of her work adds a new dimension to her novels," said PW in a boxed review. All ages. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

"Imagine sitting on a sofa with a friend listening with fascination while she tells you about the pictures in her photo album. That is the feeling once has when browsing through this book of Lowry's family snapshots and reading her lively commentary on them. . . . The author's voice comes through strongly as she shares both her happiest and saddest times. . . . Much more intimate and personal than many traditional memories, this work makes readers feel that Lowry is an old friend."

Children's Literature

As a two-time winner of the Newbery medal, Lowery serves up a book that is quite different from her numerous other books written during the last 20 years. This one offers a personal glimpse into her life. However, it is not a typical biography, rather it is reminiscences that have been triggered by looking at a series of pictures mostly taken during her early years. The experiences, according to Lowery, are what provide the fuel and fodder for the books that she has written. The truth of this is demonstrated through the quotes from her books that precede each picture. Lowery has given each episode an intriguing title and succeeds in tantalizing readers with her recollection of the event-what happened and how she felt. While this book will certainly appeal to Lowery fans, it may also inspire nascent writers.

Children's Literature

This recipient of two Newbery Medals has delighted us with over twenty-five books. Now she shares her life with us in a unique autobiography. It includes many family pictures in which she jumps back and forth in time as her story unfolds. It adds an extra dimension to her books because we know her as a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother and a writer. The joys and the sadness, the triumphs and the disappointments reach out to us, eager readers. Each chapter begins with a quote from one of her books and serves as a jumping off point for the memories that follow. Creative writing teachers will want their students to see how Lowry's own experiences flesh out her characters and their problems. Her creativity makes each story a work of art.

Children's Literature

Lowry's books are loaded with versatility, creativity, emotional tones, and interesting perspectives. These same qualities hold true in this selection. The book is partly inspired by her fans' wondering about what has inspired her books. Writers are asked this question all the time, but Lowry is a pensive listener and this question sent her on a backwards journey reviewing her life's "moments, memories, fragments, falsehoods, and fantasies." Short vignettes are highlighted by photographs which help to explain her life and writings. They also initiate thoughts about parallels between herself and her mother, communicate the sadness and joys she's experienced, generate what-ifs, and capture who she is. Each piece is short, beautifully crafted, and poignant. 1998, Delacorte, Ages 9 to 12, $16.00. Reviewer: Susie Wilde

KLIATT

"Memory," wrote Cicero, "is the treasury and guardian of all things." Lois Lowry shares her memories, accompanied by a treasury of family photos, with humor, pathos, and for one so self-conscious as a child, remarkable candor. Her story begins in 1910 with a photo of her grandmother and her mother, a "four-year-old girl with hair ribbons in her curls," who wants to have two little girls when she grows up. She has Helen in 1934 and Lois in 1937. Lowry is herself a tireless photographer of family, so the reader is treated to baby pictures of several generations, as well as accompanying anecdotes, interspersed with quotes from Lowry's books. Pets and favorite clothes are also featured, though not much about her work as an author. Lowry shares the birth of her children, her divorce, her new romance, and her grandchildren. The major themes of Lowry's novels are apparent in her memoirs—family, courage, love, and loss. Sadly, Lowry lost her son Grey in a plane crash in 1995 when he was 36. The reader shares Lowry's life in points of light from a flashbulb, frozen in the emulsion on a piece of film. The experience is complete and healing, a treasury of life. KLIATT Codes: JSA—Recommended for junior and senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 1998, Random House/Delacorte, 181p, 23cm, $12.95. Ages 13 to adult. Reviewer: Janet Julian; English Teacher, Grafton H.S., Grafton, MA, May 2000 (Vol. 34 No. 3)

Andrea Higbie

...[L]ife for Lowry, as for most everyone else, is never just one big happily-ever-after; there are bumps, dips, valleys...."Time goes on," she wrote in her very first novel, A Summer To Die, "and your life is still there, and you have to live it." -- The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

• Forewords & Introductions

Forewords & Introductions

How Do You Do (An Introduction)

When I was a child - very shy, very self-conscious - I was sometimes taken by my mother to events at which I would be introduced to adults who swooped at me with toothy smiles and unanswerable questions. I had a tendency to look at the ground, scrunch the hem of my dress in my hand, chew on a strand of my own hair, and scuff one shoe against the other during those painful moments.

"Look up!" my mother used to tell me. "Hold your shoulders straight! Look people in the eye! Say, 'fine, thank you, how are you?"

I tried, but it was excruciating. I wasn't fine at all, holding out my nail-bitten hand for a stranger to shake. I was paralyzed, mute, and hoping for a trap door to open beneath me so that I could disappear with a whoosh into some dark cavern where I could curl up with a book until the grownups stopped their socializing.

I still don't like introductions very much. Have you met my nephew, who once scored the winning touchdown for a college in the Midwest? I'd like you to meet Aunt Emma, who is visiting from Seattle, where she raises hybrid peonies. May I present Ogden Weatherbee, who invented the gyrating oscilloscope? I know you will enjoy making the acquaintance of Miss Smirkling, who does wonderful charcoal portraits of miniature poodles as a hobby. And here is Cousin Florence, with her triplets!

Trap-door time!

But I am all grown up now, so I have learned to stand up straight and hold out my hand. Here I am, looking right in the eye. I would like to introduce you to this book. It has no plot. It is about moments, memories, fragments, falsehoods, and fantasies. It is about things that happened, which caused other things to happen, so that eventually stories emerged.

At Boston's Logan Airport, in Terminal C, there is a kinetic sculpture: a sculpture that moves. Even though Terminal C has a food court, seafood restaurant, a bookstore, and even a beauty parlor, it is the always-in-motion, pinging, dinging sculpture that commands the attention of everyone: travelers, toddlers, and trash collectors.

A ball sets off from the top (ding!) and makes its way through tubes, across intersections, down lifts and stairs and slides; along the way it bumps into another ball (chime!) and sets that one rolling around corners and along passages, and eventually it, too, collides (ping!) with another and sends it on its way.

Everything that happens causes something else to happen. Just like life.

A dog bites a mailman and the mailman drops his bag and scatters some letters on the lawn. One disappears under a bush and is lost. Maybe it was a love letter. Maybe the woman who failed to receive the letter decided to heck with it and went to law school - or to Australia - or to a therapist; and because of that, the man who sent the letter (but received no reply) decided to buy a dog to keep him company; and then he took the dog to obedience classes, where it met a dog who had bitten a mailman, and...

Well, you get the idea.

Stories don't just appear out of nowhere. They need a ball that starts to roll.

Kids ask me all the time: "How do you get ideas?"

When I try to answer, in a general way, they zero right in. "Yes," they say, "but how did you get the idea for-"

Here, in this book, I have tried to answer some of the questions. I looked back, in order to do so, through snapshots of my own past. Here are some of the balls - ping! - at the moment when they start their trip down that complicated passageway that is called life but that also, magically, becomes fiction along the way.

I have given them titles. Strange, evocative titles, some of them, like "Looming Huge," and "Opening a Trunk." They may make you look back and recapture memories of your own. From the memories may come stories. Tell them to your friends. To your family. Tell them to me, won't you? Now that we've been properly introduced?

How do you do!