{"id":6841,"date":"2015-02-13T20:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T01:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=6841"},"modified":"2015-02-13T20:00:12","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T01:00:12","slug":"anastasia-at-your-service-by-lois-lowrybantam-doubleday-dell-1992-originally-1982","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/anastasia-at-your-service-by-lois-lowrybantam-doubleday-dell-1992-originally-1982\/","title":{"rendered":"Anastasia at Your Service by Lois LowryBantam Doubleday Dell 1992 (originally 1982)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I definitely owned this book as a kid, and was pleased to remember some parts of it as I read—including the really excellent\/hilarious opening scene, in which Anastasia is so bored she\u2019s lying on the floor acting out all the deathbed scenes she can think of (Beth from Little Women<\/em>, Juliet from Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, Charlotte from Charlotte\u2019s Web<\/em>, Cleopatra), and in which Anastasia\u2019s mom teaches her what a groan sounds like (Anastasia thinks it just consists of saying \u201cgroan\u201d). But there were other things I didn\u2019t remember at all, and I definitely did not remember how stressful<\/em> this book is (which is something that, as an adult, makes me like it a bit less than I liked the first two books in this series).<\/p>\n

So, right: it\u2019s summer vacation, and Anastasia\u2019s broke (because her allowance is two dollars a week) and bored (because her family recently moved, and the only kid her age she knows in her new town is off at basketball camp). Her dad suggests that a summer job will solve both problems, so she writes up a flyer advertising her services as a lady\u2019s companion and posts it around town. A woman named Mrs. Bellingham responds to the ad and hires her, but then, on her first day, Anastasia finds herself in the kitchen with the housekeeper and two cooks, polishing silver: she\u2019s doing the tasks of a maid. And two things make the whole situation worse: first, she accidentally drops a silver spoon down the garbage disposal, and is told she\u2019ll have to pay for it out of her wages—so she can\u2019t just quit until she\u2019s paid it off. And then she learns that the following day, she\u2019s expected to serve appetizers and drinks at a birthday luncheon Mrs. Bellingham is throwing for her thirteen-year-old granddaughter, Daphne—who\u2019s going to be in Anastasia\u2019s class at school. <\/p>\n

Which leads to the first stressful thing: Anastasia decides she\u2019s going to disguise herself as a middle-aged lady, so maybe when school starts Daphne won\u2019t recognize her. Clearly this is not the strongest plan, and a comedy of errors ensues at the party. But luckily, Daphne turns out to be nice, so Anastasia gains a friend. Which leads to the next stressful thing: Daphne\u2019s upset at her grandmother for having given her a doll for her birthday, and Anastasia\u2019s upset that she has to work as a maid rather than as a companion, so they decide to try to humiliate Mrs. Bellingham at the big charity party she\u2019s throwing the following week. Again, not the best plan. There\u2019s more stress, too, involving an accident that befalls Anastasia\u2019s little brother. And oh, Anastasia gets in trouble with her parents because she says something really offensive about the town\u2019s low-income housing development—never mind that she was only imitating Daphne imitating Mrs. Bellingham, not actually saying the offensive thing herself. Everything turns out fine, ultimately, and the stressful things resolve themselves in sometimes-hilarious ways, but I don\u2019t really like reading about plans that are clearly doomed to go awry. Still, I liked this book, particularly the very beginning and the very end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I definitely owned this book as a kid, and was pleased to remember some parts of it as I read—including the really excellent\/hilarious opening scene, in which Anastasia is so bored she\u2019s lying on the floor acting out all the deathbed scenes she can think of (Beth from Little Women, Juliet from Romeo and Juliet, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-young-adultchildrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}