Emily’s Post: Lois Lowry Interview (Part I)

Posted on April 17, 2009 ·Tagged Interviews, Lois Lowry.

“I’m just a little nervous. I mean, she won the Newbery twice. Who does that?” That’s what I wrote on my library’s blog one week before I interviewed Lois Lowry. It’s always a treat to talk to an author, but what do you ask the woman who has been asked everything?

Of course, Lowry answers questions thoughtfully and elegantly. Listening to her voice, I could almost forget that she wrote about an entire class of second graders putting underwear on their heads. Almost. She’s the kind of person who says, “I think both of those people are completely wrong,” so politely that you practically miss the startling indictment.

I hope all of you will come hear Lowry speak at the RIEMA conference on April 24th. I’ll be posting my interview with her here in two parts–plus, I’ll throw in a book review of the latest Gooney Bird Greene book, which came out on March 23rd. But nothing compares to hearing Lowry in person, so if you haven’t registered for the conference yet, do so immediately!

Oh, and to get back to my dilemma: what do you ask the woman who has been asked everything? Well, I asked her to tell me one of her classic stories.

Emily Brown: One story I was hoping you would tell—I know you’ve told it many times, but I love the story of when you were asked to speak at an 8th grade graduation. Do you think you could tell that story for this interview?

Lois Lowry: Let me think back to when that would have been. It was just after my first book was published. The book was A Summer to Die and it was published in 1974. It was long enough [after publication] that the kids in the area where I lived, which was Maine, had read the book. For that reason I was asked to speak at this local, small town, 8^th grade graduation.

I didn’t really prepare. I didn’t write a speech. So I was sitting there in the audience and the kids were all on the stage. [It was] a hot summer evening. And prior to my going up on stage to speak to them were brief speeches. I think probably the superintendent of schools and the principal of this particular school. Both of them men. And I was startled by what they said.

One of them said, looking at these awkward 8^th graders with the braces on their teeth, “These are your golden years.” I thought, he’s so wrong. He could not be more wrong. And then the other guy got up and said another platitudinous thing. He said something like, “life is like a football game. First down and four to go.” And again I sat there thinking, you have it so wrong.

And so when I stood up to speak, even though I had thought of more appropriate things to say, I said I think both of those people are completely wrong and that these are not your golden years at all. These are terrible years, and the thing is, it gets better. These aren’t your golden years, because that would be much too depressing. And life is not like a football game, because football games are well organized and they have rules that are quite clear and people who run out and blow whistles if you break the rules, and life isn’t like that all. Life is very confusing and hard.

And another thing that I said is that, remembering my own 8^th grade years, I spent half my time desperately envious of a particular girl for the stupid reason that she had enormous breasts. I said that to the kids and particularly when I mentioned the breasts, they all began to look interested. They had been looking quite bored up until that point.

And it was a moment when I realized that there’s a huge gap between kids that age and adults. The adults in the audience all kind of jumped and looked startled when I spoke. So I began to perceive my job—even then, with only one book published, but I think another one about to be published—as trying in some way to bridge that gap and to speak with honesty to kids at that age.

So, is that the story you wanted?

EB: That’s the story I wanted. I love that story, and it made me wonder if you ever see it as ironic that your books are required reading, or if you’re comfortable with kids first experiencing them that way.

LL: Well, I never really thought of that much. The child that I was kind of envies today’s kids, because when I was in school at the age when they’re assigning Number the Stars, we didn’t read books of any sort except text books. So I would have greatly loved to have a book like that assigned to me when I was young.

The thing that does bother me occasionally is when I’ll get an e-mail from a kid who is having to read in school a book by me and then has some stupid quiz and comes to me with a plea for help. For example, I have an e-mail here. It says, “Please tell me all the similes and metaphors in The Giver.” I mean, that’s such a stupid question to begin with, so it kind of bothers me when teachers ruin the reading of the book, but I don’t think that happens fairly often.

EB: I know that on the flip side, your books have sometimes been challenged in schools, and I wonder if there was ever a scene you considered taking out of a book you’d written or were pressured to take out.

LL: I’ve been fortunate in my publisher in that they’ve never pressured me to take something out. And when I’m writing, a lot of things come into my head and a book makes its way along slowly and things go in and come out. I don’t recall ever sitting at my desk and thinking, “Oh that’s too tough for a kid.” I don’t think about the audience. I guess subconsciously in the back of my mind it’s always there. I can’t describe that well. But I don’t think, “Is this appropriate for a 12-year-old?” Or even, “Am I writing this for a 12-year-old?” I don’t think it would come naturally to me to do anything that would be offensive, and it surprises me when my books are banned.

EB: You talked a little bit about when you were a child, and one thing that we have in common, is that we’re both military brats. I know that you lived in Japan, I think when you were eleven, and I wondered if before you went over there, you were a little scared, remembering World War II.

LL: You know it’s an interesting question. I don’t think I’ve been asked it before. I was eleven years old when we went to Japan in 1948. The war had been over for 3 years, and I don’t recall feeling any kind of apprehension having to do with the fact that we were going to a country with whom we’d been at war. What I do remember is excitement and fascination with going to a new and very different place. I was a child who read a great deal. I was fortunate that I lived in a house filled with books and near the public library, so I had read about Japan, and I suppose when we were going there, I may have even sought out other things and read more.

EB: I believe that you have a little bit of a connection to Providence, too. When you went to college, first it was to Brown. Is that correct?

LL: In those days, the girls’ part of Brown was Pembroke.

EB: Did you feel at home at college?

LL: I did. I had always been devoted to scholarship. I was always a good student. I mean, anybody can be a good student by studying and getting good grades, but I loved learning things. So I always spent more time studying than I needed to, because I would get interested in tangential things.

EB: And then you left college after two years to get married. Did that surprise people, or were they expecting it?

LL: At that time people married young, and I had a boyfriend who was 2 years older. He graduated from Brown and wanted to get married, so at the age of 19, I dropped out of college and married him.

EB: And where did you guys live then?

LL: California, first. Immediately on graduating from Brown, he was commissioned in the Navy, and he stayed in the Navy for 4 years before he got out and went to law school, so we lived in San Diego and then New London, CT, and then Key West, FL, and then Charleston, SC.

EB: You have a lovely biography on your website, which talks a lot about your family and your childhood, but it doesn’t say when you started writing. Was that something you wanted to do as a child, or did it come out later?

LL: From the time that I was 8 or 9, I always wanted to be a writer. At 17, I majored in writing at college, so it was always part of my life. Because I married young and had 4 children young, before I was 26, and then went back to finish college, it took me a while to get around to writing for children. My first book was published when I was 40, and before that, I had been writing for magazines.

EB: Do have anything you wrote for school when you were young?

LL: I remember them but unfortunately I don’t still have them. It would be fun to look back at them now. It would be fun or it would be hideously embarrassing.

Stay tuned for Part II, in which we learn about Lowry’s photography skills and soon-to-be-published picture book–plus some Hollywood gossip and an exclusive on the plumbing at her farm house in Maine! (Just kidding … sort of.)

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