FAYETTEVILLE -- It didn't take long for nearly 90 new characters to emerge from the minds of children writing under the guidance of author Lois Lowry at the library of Fayetteville High School.
"I want you to start thinking of a character," Lowry told them. "Make some notes."
Lois Lowry
Age: 78
Author of more than 45 books
Newbery medals for The Giver and Number the Stars
Born in Hawaii to a military family, the second of three children
Mother to four children, including a son who died in 1995
Lives in Boston and Maine
Two pets: Tibetan terrier Alfie; cat Lulu
Source: www.loislowry.com
Lowry, 78, started her visit Wednesday in the Performing Arts Center, telling stories about her life and people and events that inspired some of her books to fourth-graders from Fayetteville elementary schools and Fayetteville Montessori School.
Lowry, who has written 45 books and won two Newbery medals, was a featured author Wednesday night at Fayetteville Public Library and is expected to meet with sophomores today at Fayetteville High School. The talks are part of the third annual True Lit Fayetteville Literacy Festival, which began Oct. 1 and ends today and also has featured musicians and artists.
The presentation to fourth-graders was followed by a writing workshop for children chosen based on pieces of writing they submitted. About 10 children from nine elementary schools attended, including some children younger than fourth grade.
In Number the Stars, Lowry talked about opening the story of the rescue of Danish Jews during World War II with a girl running down the street in Copenhagen, Denmark. The girl encounters two Nazi soldiers pointing guns at her and telling her to stop running, Lowry said.
"You know who the book is about, where they are," Lowry said. "Something happens that gets the story going."
Lowry told the young authors to give their characters names, put them in a place and then to imagine they encounter a trap door.
"Once they open a door and go through it, that's the world of imagination," Lowry said.
Holcomb Elementary fourth-grader Laney Fuhrman, 10, decided to write about a 5-year-old girl named Abby who was very intelligent but couldn't walk or talk.
Laney liked hearing Lowry talk about weaving made-up stories that tie in real events and people as Lowry did with Number the Stars. In the story Laney wrote to attend the writing workshop, Laney's main character, Jessica, has a friend Caleb who wants to go to a science museum.
Laney also has a friend named Caleb, she said.
Laney wants to be an inventor and likes using her creativity in writing, she said. Her favorite books by Lowry are funny stories about a second-grade girl named Gooney Bird Greene.
Having an imagination comes naturally to Lowry, the author said.
"I'm always amazed by the fact they enter a comic book world," Lowry said, referring to other children on Wednesday who made up characters that tied in with Batman and Pokemon. "They think in a world that is not my world. That's what their imagination dwells on."
Lowry told all of the fourth-graders that Anastasia Krupnik was inspired by Amy Carter, the daughter of President Jimmy Carter. Lowry's father was an Army dentist whose patients included the daughters of President Richard Nixon.
Her father would tell Lowry and her late sister about how beautiful they were, about their manners and nicely flossed teeth, Lowry said.
"We couldn't stand the Nixon daughters," Lowry said. "We thought they were a little too perfect."
Lowry developed an interest in presidential daughters and remembers Amy Carter as a child who would misbehave and once threw a tantrum in public.
"I thought she was like my kids," said Lowry, who became the mother of four children.
Lowry made Laney laugh when she told the fourth-graders about an older brother Lowry made up while attending a summer camp.
Lowry was 10 years old in the summer of 1947. She had a subscription to Jack and Jill magazine and had written a letter once a month to the magazine but none of them had been published. While at camp, Lowry's mother called to tell her the magazine selected one of Lowry's letters for its August issue.
In the letter, Lowry told the magazine about her older sister and her younger brother. Lowry was worried her fellow campers and camp counselors would read the letter and realize she had lied to them about an older brother she had told them about.
Lowry noticed the camp counselors, who were college girls, paid more attention to campers with brothers in college. She told them about her real younger brother and her real older sister, she told the fourth-graders Wednesday. She invented a third sibling, a brother in college, she said.
"They paid a whole lot of attention to me because of David the handsome blonde brother with a convertible," Lowry said.
When the magazine with her letter arrived at camp, Lowry hid it to avoid being exposed as a terrible liar, she said.
"Maybe it was just the beginning, not of lying, but of creating fiction," Lowry said.
The goal of the festival is to promote the love of reading and literacy, said Lolly Greenwood, the festival organizer and the director of youth and outreach services for Fayetteville Public Library. She hopes meeting Lowry gives students more confidence in their writing skills.
"She's giving them some really good ideas of getting started," Greenwood said. "Some day some of these are going to be published authors."
NW News on 10/08/2015