Anastasia Krupnik

By Lois Lowry

Copyright 1979

Anastasia Krupnick is a strong, smart, original 10 year old girl, caught in that often painful spot between childhood and adulthood.  She keeps a private list of her likes and dislikes and often changes her mind about which side people and things are on.  

Her parents move back and forth between the two lists, depending on the day.  When they have the audacity to announce to Anastasia that they are going to have a new baby, she is appalled and lets them know it.  Then, when they tell her she can have the honor of naming the new baby, she secretly decides upon One-Ball Reilly and adds babies to her growing list of dislikes.  However, her parents move back to the list of likes when her father soothes her hurt feelings after she receives an F on a poem she wrote for a school project. With her father being a poet himself, she works extra hard on the project and proudly recites her lovely poem to the class. Her teacher scolds her for the lack of rhyme and in front of the whole class writes a big red F on the paper.  A wonderful moment in the book happens when her father, after reading the poem, changes the F to Fabulous.

Her grandma begins on the likes list, but is crossed off.  Anastasia’s grandma is very old and in a nursing home and often doesn’t know who her granddaughter is.  Anastasia feels very uncomfortable around her grandma and doesn’t like visiting her.  As she matures over the course of the book, she begins to feel compassion for her grandma and the losses she has endured.  The evolution of the relationship between the two is very touching, and by the end of the story, Grandma is firmly back on the likes list.

Anastasia is growing up and that means leaving her selfishness behind.  It means seeing the world from someone else’s point of view and having compassion for them.  It means taking the time to fully understand something before passing judgement.  By the end of the story, her heart has expanded and babies have been written onto the likes list.  And fortunately for her new baby brother, Anastasia has changed her mind about the name One-Ball Reilly!