Lois Lowry is the author of several books for children and young adults, including The Giver Quartet, Number the Stars, and Rabble Starkey.
23 Facts About Lois Lowry
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Lois Lowry is known for writing about difficult subject matters, dystopias, and complex themes in works for young audiences.
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Lois Lowry's maternal grandfather, Merkel Landis, a banker, created the Christmas Club savings program in 1910.
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Lois Lowry has an older sister named Helen, and a younger brother called Jon.
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Lois Lowry's father was an army dentist, whose work moved the family all over the United States and to many parts of the world.
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Lois Lowry began reading at three years old, which allowed her to skip the first grade when she started school at age six in Carlisle at the Franklin School.
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Lois Lowry attended seventh and eighth grades at the American School in Japan, a school for dependents of those involved in the military.
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Lois Lowry returned to the United States to attend high school.
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Lois Lowry finished high school at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights, New York, attending from 1952 to 1954.
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Lois Lowry then attended Pembroke College, which became fully merged with Brown University in 1971.
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Lois Lowry left the university in 1956 after her marriage to Donald Grey Lois Lowry, a US Navy officer.
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Lois Lowry agreed and wrote her first book A Summer to Die, which was later published by Houghton Mifflin in 1977 when she was 40 years old.
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Lois Lowry continued to write about difficult topics in her next publication, Autumn Street, which explores themes of coping with racism, grief, and fear at a young age.
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Lois Lowry published Number the Stars in 1989, which received multiple awards, including the 1990 Newbery Medal.
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Lois Lowry received another Newbery in 1994, for The Giver.
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Lois Lowry's writing on such matters has accumulated both praise and criticism.
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Robin Wasserman, a writer for The New York Times, said "In many ways, Lois Lowry invented the contemporary young adult dystopian novel", pointing out that in 1993 it was "unusual and unsettling" for children's literature to address topics of political oppression, euthanasia, suicide, or murder.
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Lois Lowry won the Newbery Medal in 1990 for her novel Number the Stars, and again in 1994 for The Giver.
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For Number the Stars, Lois Lowry has received the National Jewish Book Award in 1990, in the Children's Literature category, and the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children's Book Award in 1991.
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Lois Lowry has been nominated three times for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books.
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Lois Lowry was a finalist in 2000, a US nominee in 2004, and a finalist in 2016.
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Lois Lowry won the annual award in 2007 for The Giver.
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Lois Lowry has been awarded honorary degrees from six universities, including a Doctorate of Letters by Brown University in 2014, St Mary's College, University of Southern Maine, Elmhurst College, Wilson College, and Lesley University.