 Cover art from the first edition | |
| Author | Lois Lowry |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Jenni Oliver |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult fiction |
| Published | Houghton Mifflin, 1977 |
| Pages | 154 |
| ISBN | 9780395253380 |
| OCLC | 2799020 |
A Summer to Die was Lois Lowry's first novel.
| Cover art from the first edition | |
| Author | Lois Lowry |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Jenni Oliver |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Young adult fiction |
| Published | Houghton Mifflin, 1977 |
| Pages | 154 |
| ISBN | 9780395253380 |
| OCLC | 2799020 |
A Summer to Die was Lois Lowry's first novel.
Meg, the younger of two sisters, is the story's narrator and primary protagonist. Their father, an English professor at a university, has decided to take a year off from teaching to write a book that he only half-jokingly claims will shake the world of literature. That means the family relocates to a small country house, and his daughters are upset to be sharing a room. Like most sisters, Meg and Molly quarrel over silly things, and Meg is jealous of her sister's blonde curls and long eyelashes. [1]
The owner of the house that the family is renting lives down the road in a smaller house on the same property. The sisters soon establish a rapport with the elderly Will Banks, who learns about photography with Meg and teaches Molly about the abundant wildflowers covering the estate. A few months after coming to the country, Molly begins having constant nosebleeds, which the doctor blames on the cold weather. Unfortunately, it is not until Molly's bed is soaked in blood that she is rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with a fatal disease: acute myelogenous leukemia.
After treatment, she seems to recover slightly, but the pills that she takes cause her hair to fall out.
Shortly thereafter, Ben Brady and a pregnant Maria Abbott, whom the townspeople incorrectly assume to be unmarried, arrive to make the third Banks house their home. All inhabitants of the property enjoy one another's company for a while. Then, the unthinkable happens, and Molly is rushed back to the hospital. She asks Meg to tell the baby to wait to be born until she comes home, and Meg obliges her, and she asks the baby to be born in the daytime since she was invited to take pictures of the birth. [2] They name it Happy William Abbott-Brady. In the end, Molly dies, and the family moves back to the city.
Through it all and with help from those who love her, Meg finds the jealousy that she once had for her sister has changed into pure love, and eventually, she is forced to accept that bad things happen to good people.
Lowry drew upon her own experience of losing her sister at a young age when writing this novel, as she stated in a 2002 lecture:
Little Women is a coming-of-age novel written by American novelist Louisa May Alcott, originally published in two volumes, in 1868 and 1869. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy—and details their passage from childhood to womanhood. Loosely based on the lives of the author and her three sisters, it is classified as an autobiographical or semi-autobiographical novel.
The Giver is a 1993 American young adult dystopian novel written by Lois Lowry, set in a society which at first appears to be utopian but is revealed to be dystopian as the story progresses.
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American Dreams is an American drama television series that ran on NBC for three seasons and 61 episodes, from September 29, 2002, to March 30, 2005. The show tells the story of the Pryor family of Philadelphia during the mid-1960s, with many plotlines around teenager Meg Pryor, who dances on Dick Clark's American Bandstand. The show often featured contemporary musicians performing as popular musicians of the 1960s. Season one takes place in 1963–64, season two in 1964–65 and season three in 1965–66.
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Lois Duncan Steinmetz, known as Lois Duncan, was an American writer, novelist, poet, and journalist. She is best known for her young-adult novels, and has been credited by historians as a pioneering figure in the development of young-adult fiction, particularly in the genres of horror, thriller, and suspense.
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All About Sam (1988) is a children's novel by Lois Lowry. It is the first in a series of four novels about the character Sam Krupnik; a character Lowry had developed earlier in her books on Sam's older sister, Anastasia Krupnik. The novel is known for its humor, and was included in the 2003 reference publication Something Funny Happened At the Library published by the American Library Association. A 1997 assessment of the novel by Joel Chaston stated that the work had wide appeal to young readers, and whereas the related Anastasia series books had appealed more to girls, the Sam Krupnik series expanded readership to audience of all genders.
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Son is a 2012 young adult dystopian novel by American author Lois Lowry. The fourth and final book in The Giver Quartet, the story takes place during and after the first book in the series, The Giver. The story follows Claire, the Birthmother of Gabriel, who was marked for "release" in The Giver before being taken out of the community by Jonas. Claire, obsessed with finding her son, embarks on a journey out of the community in an attempt to follow and find him. The novel explores themes of love, obligation, sacrifice, and loss. Son received mostly positive reviews from critics.
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