Emily Brown: So you wrote for magazines after you went back and got your degree. And you interviewed a painter with a vivid sense of color, Carl Nelson, who then went blind, and is that his photo on the cover of The Giver?

Lois Lowry: Yes. I had spent time with him and photographed him for a magazine article back in 1977. I worked often as a photographer. I studied photography in graduate school and it was a good adjunct to writing, so sometimes I would keep a photograph or two, even though I would deliver them to the person who had commissioned them, and the photograph of him was one that I had kept a copy of. It was years later that The Giver was about to be published and we used that on the cover and he, by then, was long dead, and it was his niece who told me he had been blind.

EB: I didn’t realize that you were a photographer. Do you ever use photos to help you with your writing?

LL: In my very first book, A Summer to Die, the young girl who is the protagonist is 13, and in the book, she is an amateur photographer and her father helps her set up a dark room. And I have another book called The Silent Boy which is entirely framed around photographs. Not photographs that I’ve taken, but I used old photographs from the early 1900s and wrote the story around those.

EB: Has anyone ever approached you about movie rights for your books? I’m thinking especially of The Giver.

LL: The Giver is in Hollywood now. So is Number the Stars. And [Sean] Astin, the actor who is in Lord of the Rings, is also the producer. He’s working on Number the Stars. It’s been a long haul with The Giver and so it may be a long time before it’s made. They had trouble getting the right screen play.

EB: I wondered if one of your books stood out as the most difficult to write.

LL: Hmmmm. I don’t think so.

EB: Does the writing get easier over time?

LL: Nope.

EB: I had bad feeling that’s what you were going to say. Does your strategy change or have you had the same way of writing since you started in terms of times and places when you like to write?

LL: Well, I have an office in my house. I have two houses. You’re talking to me in Massachusetts, but I also have an old farm house in Maine. And in both places I have a room which is exclusively mine. I’m going up to Maine this week on Thursday simply because when I’m here, I’m distracted by so many different things. I mean, here I am talking to you on the phone, yesterday I had lunch with the writer Alice Hoffman who lives in Cambridge, and tomorrow, I’m going to speak to kids. So there’s always something.

And when I go to Maine, there’s nothing. The phone never rings and nobody knows I’m there, and that’s when I really get uninterrupted work done.

EB: Your farmhouse in Maine, is it an old one?

LL: Built in 1768.

EB: Does it require a lot of work?

LL: We did a lot of renovations, but it’s also a lot of maintenance. Just this winter, in January, we had to have a new well drilled 320 feet down.

EB: Does it actually have a barn that goes with the farm house?

LL: Oh yeah, it has an enormous barn.

EB: What do you do with your barn?

LL: The barn is empty, but the grandchildren love to play in the barn and one time we had a 50^th anniversary party for friends and we decorated the inside of the barn and had the party in there.

EB: I know writers can never say too much about what they’re working on now, but I think you’re working on a book called Crow Call, is that right?

LL: That book is finished.

EB: And what you can tell us about it?

LL: That’s actually a picture book—I’ve not done picture books before—it’s a story that was published many years ago in a magazine and it was a story for adults, but it was seen through the eyes of a child.

It’s autobiographical, about the time when my father came home at the end of World War II and he was a stranger to me. I was 9-years-old in the story, and in the first paragraph, there’s the line, “I sat in the car next to the stranger who was my father.” So the child desperately wants to love this person who she knows is her father, but she’s scared of him, and probably he is of her. So it’s the story of two people coming together with some difficulty.

EB: Can you tell us who the illustrator is?

LL: I’m not sure I pronounce his name correctly, but it’s Bagram Ibatoulline.

EB: Oh, how beautiful. I think there’s something old fashioned or fairy-tale-like about his illustrations. I think you worked closely with the illustrator for Gooney Bird Greene, too, and I wondered if that’s typical or if that was a unique experience.

LL: The woman who did those drawings for the Gooney Bird Greene book is a close friend of mine. When I gave that first Gooney Bird manuscript to my editor, who is a man who has since retired, he said he was going to have trouble finding an illustrator for it, and so I just asked my friend to do some drawings and she’s done the other books about Gooney Bird as well.

EB: When you saw the first drawing of Gooney Bird Greene, how did it strike you?

LL: Oh, I liked it—the first illustration in that book, where the child appears in her classroom wearing pajamas and cowboy boots.

EB: I remember that picture, too. Have you had any fan mail for your latest Gooney Bird Greene book?

LL: It’s too soon. The book comes out this week.

EB: Oh, I didn’t realize! In general, what kind of letters have you received from kids who read Gooney Bird?

LL: Kids are younger who read those, second or third grade classrooms, and often I’ll hear from a whole class, usually with photographs, that they’ve had a Gooney Bird Greene day and they can all wear outrageous clothing. Sometimes the teachers do, too.

EB: There’s a lot of talk right now about the publishing industry and it was a bad Christmas for bookstores. I wondered, does that affect you?

LL: Sure it does. Everybody’s very concerned about it. I think people who will be most severely affected are either brand new authors or people who have written one or two books that have not been best-sellers, because publishers are not going to take risks any more. They’ll continue to publish Stephen King and John Grisham and maybe me, but they’re all in financial trouble. But, you know, things will get better and books won’t go away.

If you can’t get enough Lois Lowry, you can check out her blog, and (even better!) you can come hear her keynote speech at the RIEMA conference this Friday, April 24th. Thanks to Lois Lowry and her publicist (and Zach!) for making this interview possible–it was such a pleasure.

The Plot: Mrs. Pidgeon introduces her second-grade class to poetry by bringing in poems her mother wrote. The unnaturally wise Gooney Bird Greene helps the other students compose haikus, couplets, and limericks and encourages everyone to wear two-pony-tail-hats (a.k.a. underwear) on their heads to warm the brain. But the humor is tempered by concern for Mrs. Pidgeon’s mother’s health.

The Good: It’s remarkable how, with a few dashes of dialog, Lowry characterizes each kid in the class perfectly and memorably. I’m always surprised that I can keep Tyrone, Malcolm, Felicia Ann, and Keiko straight. I know it’s not me; it’s her.

The Bad: The physical format of the books has changed! The others had large, welcoming pages, in the tradition of the original The Stories Julian Tells, by Ann Cameron. I’m sorry to see the Gooney Bird books get shrunk from a “transitional” reader to regular chapter book size.* I also felt that this book had that second-installment-in-a-trilogy feel. Although it’s actually the fourth book in the series, it depends on an emotional connection to the characters–particularly Mrs. Pidgeon’s mother–that was established in earlier books.

Who Should Read it:Fans of Gooney Bird, obviously. Plus anyone who’s looking for creative ways to bring poetry into the classroom or address the death of an older person.

Who Shouldn’t Read it: Anyone who does not want their students to come to school with underwear on their head. And anyone who just read Love That Dog, by Sharon Creech, because this covers similar emotional and curricular territory. Comparisons are inevitable. I think I prefer Love that Dog. But I prefer the first Gooney Bird book, which teaches storytelling, to Love that Dog–if that makes it any better.

*However, it occurs to me that the shrink is good news for kids who are ordered to read a book that is at least 100 pages. Gooney Bird is So Absurd is 105 pages long. The others clock in at about 75.

Part II of the Interview is coming soon!

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.)