{"id":6299,"date":"2014-08-13T16:10:23","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T20:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=6299"},"modified":"2014-08-13T16:10:23","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T20:10:23","slug":"anastasia-again-by-lois-lowryyearling-1992-originally-houghton-mifflin-1981","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/anastasia-again-by-lois-lowryyearling-1992-originally-houghton-mifflin-1981\/","title":{"rendered":"Anastasia Again! by Lois LowryYearling, 1992 (Originally Houghton Mifflin, 1981)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Anastasia Again!<\/em> starts with twelve-year-old Anastasia’s reaction to her parents’ announcement that they’re moving to the suburbs: to say she’s not pleased would be an understatement. Anastasia has lived in Cambridge (where her dad teaches at Harvard) her whole life, and she’s sure that suburbia will be an aesthetic and intellectual wasteland, which results in hilarious passages like this, about her dad:<\/p>\n

He was reading an article called “Morality and Mythology.” Anastasia didn’t have any idea what that meant; but she liked it that her father knew what it meant and that he liked reading about it, and she was absolutely certain that there wasn’t a single person in the entire suburbs of the United States who would ever in his entire life read an article called “Morality and Mythology.” (2).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anastasia’s also sure that suburbia means split-level houses, matching furniture sets, a lack of bookcases, big TVs, plastic fruit, and bad art. So, yeah, not excited to move there. But then her family finds a house that’s got what each of them wants most, including a tower bedroom for Anastasia, and she finds herself liking suburbia despite herself. Which doesn’t make moving easy, exactly: it still means leaving the only place she’s lived, and being farther from her best friend, and having to make new friends. And packing: “It was hard, packing. Not hard on the muscles—Anastasia had pretty good muscles—but hard on the head. And hard on the heart” (45).<\/p>\n

In suburbia, the Krupniks’ next-door neighbor turns out to be an old woman named Gertrude Stein (which leads to a hilarious conversation between Anastasia and her English-professor father), who takes an immediate liking to Anastasia’s brother Sam, and gets to be friendly with Anastasia as well. The friendship between the Krupnik kids and Gertrude (who they call Gertrustein, because that’s how Sam says it, like Frankenstein) is totally sweet: one of the highlights of the book is when Anastasia visits the Senior Citizens Drop-In Center and invites everyone to a party at her house so Mrs. Stein can make some friends her own age. (Another highlight is Mrs. Stein’s totally hilarious story of her idiot husband who left her decades ago, and good riddance to him.) <\/p>\n

Also, how great is this list of titles of mysteries Anastasia thinks about but doesn’t write (and one she does)?<\/p>\n