“Mrs. Westvessel, she knew, was really a pretty good teacher. At any rate, she had taught Anastasia to remember the difference between minuends and subtrahends, which was not a particularly interesting thing to know; and also how to say ‘I love you’ in both French and German, which was not only very interesting but might come in handy someday.”

Anastasia’s thoughts here are an example of the types of evidence Anastasia presents when deciding to make up her mind. In trying to convince herself Mrs. Westvessel is a good teacher, Anastasia shows her logic abilities by pointing to things Mrs. Westvessel has taught her. In addition, these lines contribute to Anastasia’s character development by highlighting her interests; in keeping with her character, she is less interested in technical things than she is in language and emotions.

“During My Neighborhood Week, one entire classroom wall had been covered with paper on which they had made a mural: each child had drawn a building to create My Neighborhood. There were three Luigi’s Pizzas; two movie theaters, both showing Superman; one Fenway Park; a split-level house with a horse tied to a tree in the yard; two aquariums; two science museums; one airport control tower; three state prisons; and a condemned apartment building with a large rat on the front steps.”

“My Neighborhood Week” is yet another example Anastasia offers about Mrs. Westvessel’s teaching style, highlighting how Mrs. Westvessel encourages students to express themselves in the classroom. The images both show the differences and similarities in the children’s lives and firmly ground the story in the Boston area. Landmarks—like Fenway Park, home stadium of the Boston Red Sox—provide precise reference points and imply that the aquarium and science museum refer to the New England Aquarium and Museum of Science, respectively. This excerpt builds the book’s setting while also showing how that the setting is important to Anastasia’s emotional journey.

“‘Come on, Anastasia. Thirty-five is the prime of life!’

‘Ten is,’ muttered Anastasia. ‘Ten is the prime of life.’

‘Wrong, both of you,’ said Anastasia’s father. ‘The prime of life is forty-five. I’m in the prime of life.’”

Here, Anastasia argues that at 35, her mother is too old to have a baby. This exchange highlights the family’s dynamics: Anastasia and her parents tend to center events on themselves. It also speaks to the time period in which the book was written, as it was less common for women to have children in their thirties in 1979. The text undercuts this idea by having each character claim their age is the “prime of life,” showing that there is no defined age for this stage.

“‘Reasons for maybe becoming a Catholic,’ wrote Anastasia in her green notebook.

1. There are fourteen Catholics in the fourth grade, and four Jews, and everybody else is something else. So I would make the fifteenth Catholic. And if ever they start a club or something, I would automatically be in it. That would be nice.

2. And I would get a new name. Maybe at about the same time I get a new brother.”

These lines are an example of The Difficulty of Forming an Identity. The text highlights how Anastasia’s lists in her green notebook are critical to her ability to work through complex emotions and problems. This list offers context for Anastasia’s beliefs and identity struggles. She wants to fit in, but the casual way with which she says being in a club would be nice suggests fitting in is not the most important thing to her. Likewise, she is noncommittal about her reason for wanting to become Catholic. She likes the idea of getting a middle name but knows little else about the religion or how to join it.

“‘You know,’ said Anastasia’s mother, ‘most people, making an important decision like that, would discuss it first with their parents.’

Anastasia looked pointedly at her mother’s middle, which was beginning to bulge slightly so that she had left the button at the top of her jeans undone. ‘Most people,’ she said to her mother, ‘making an important decision like that would discuss it first with their child.’”

Anastasia’s parents aren’t convinced of her desire to become a Catholic and agree she should have consulted with them first. Here, Anastasia points out that her mother did not discuss her plans to have a baby with Anastasia beforehand and didn’t explain what having a new sibling would mean for Anastasia and their family. The exchange between Anastasia and her mother reveals the similarities between the two characters. Both believe important decisions should be discussed with family, however, each has a different idea of what constitutes an important decision that warrants family input.

“I don’t care if you get involved with someone who is African American, or in the sixth grade. I just don’t want you to get involved with someone who is insensitive, or who is wont to trespass on the inviolate memories of childhood in a way that is completely lacking in charity or compassion.”

These lines from Anastasia’s father follow her mother’s story about falling in love with a boy when she was 10 years old. She wants to convey that Anastasia’s crush on Washburn is acceptable at her age, and her father reinforces this belief by describing in detail what does and does not make someone an acceptable partner. In the 1970s in the United States, dating between people of different races was not widely accepted, and her father’s insistence that race and age are not as important as character is progressive for the time period.

“Often Anastasia’s parents had told her that there is laughing with someone, and there is laughing at someone, and one is okay but the other is not. Washburn Cummings was definitely, she realized, laughing at her, and it was not okay, and she began to have a very serious stomachache.”

These lines exemplify the theme of coping with complex emotions. They follow Anastasia’s attempt to impress Washburn with her stylized hair and hip-wiggle walk. Both of these things backfire, prompting Washburn to laugh at her, and Anastasia’s reaction shows her working through her emotional response. By working through the difference between being laughed “at” and “with,” Anastasia shows her ability to read a situation and understand what’s happening. The stomach ache is a physical response to emotional distress, which gives young readers a way to recognize such emotions in themselves by how they might feel physically.

“You have to pay extra, for Pete’s sake, to have it stenciled on a T-shirt. There are too many letters. That’s one thing wrong with it.

And another thing is that you can’t make a nickname out of it. A nickname that ends in i.”

These lines show Anastasia going through the typical childhood issue of disliking her name, highlighting the difficulty of forming an identity. The girls at school are starting a club for short names that end in “i,” and Anastasia’s frustration shows she feels left out. Changing or shortening her name, like her desire to convert to Catholicism, is an example of her trying to adjust her identity to fit in with the different social groups in her school. However, in the following chapters, there is no mention of the club, showing that it is not a major factor in Anastasia’s life and that her name does not define her identity.

“‘Does anyone know a four-letter word for ruler?’ he asked, going back to the crossword puzzle.

‘King,’ said Anastasia. ‘That’s ridiculously easy.’

‘The New York Times wouldn’t use king,’ her father grumbled, but he wrote it in lightly.”

These lines exemplify the family banter that persists between heavier topics in Anastasia’s family. While she converses with her parents, her father also fills in the New York Times’s crossword puzzle, and he gets his entire family involved by asking for input about the answers. Anastasia’s quick response highlights her ability to think on her feet. Her father lightly penciling in Anastasia’s answer, even though it may not be correct, shows that he recognizes Anastasia’s intelligence and trusts her judgment.

“‘No kidding. The whole family was wiped out by the Bolsheviks, kids and all.’

‘Was she just a little kid?’

‘I don’t remember how old. A teenager. And they all got shot.’

‘Hey, that’s cool.’”

This exchange between Anastasia and her father comes during the debate about the length of Anastasia’s name. Her father offers a different perspective—the significance of the name in history. Here, Anastasia’s father explains how the Russian Romanovs met their demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1918 after the Russian Revolution. Anastasia’s enthusiastic response shows that this kind of story, which is dramatic and macabre, resonates with her more than the prospect of joining a name-based club at school. It builds on the theme of the difficulty of forming an identity.

“The scary, clawlike hands smoothed her hair. Funny how soft and nice that felt. If she didn’t look at the hands it was okay. If she just looked at her grandmother’s moist, kind eyes, everything seemed almost okay.”

Here, Anastasia sits with her grandmother on Thanksgiving, and this excerpt highlights how Anastasia’s emotional response to her grandmother changes throughout the latter portion of the book. Up until now, Anastasia has been afraid of and angry at her grandmother. Anastasia doesn’t yet understand that these emotions are driven by a lack of understanding about her grandmother’s illness. In this moment, Anastasia realizes she can find comfort in her grandmother’s presence despite her discomfort with her grandmother’s symptoms, which is a catalyst for emotional change.

“‘And she forgets my name. I hate that too.’

Her mother didn’t say anything. She put mashed potatoes into a yellow bowl. Anastasia started to cry. A salt-flavored tear came down the side of her face and into the corner of her mouth; she tasted it with the tip of her tongue, and waited for the next one.

‘I don’t hate Grandmother,’ she said in a voice that had to find its way out lopsided, around the tears. ‘But I hate it that she’s so old.’”

After realizing she can find comfort in her grandmother, Anastasia can no longer be only afraid and angry. Instead, sorrow, starts to creep in, which leads to the realization that Anastasia is struggling with the idea of old age and mortality, even if she can’t yet articulate her feelings in those terms. This builds on the theme of coping with complex emotions.

“She had run her fingers over the letters, liking the way they felt, thought briefly about asking for an A. Krupnik nameplate for her own bedroom door at home, decided it would be ostentatious (a word she had written on page seven of her green notebook), at age ten, and discarded the idea. She would have a nameplate when her name was more important, she decided: maybe by the time she was twelve.”

These lines speak directly to The Pressure to Act in the Face of Uncertainty. Anastasia often feels that things must happen sooner, rather than later. In response to the nameplate on her father’s office door at work, Anastasia thinks she, too, should have a nameplate. However, Anastasia also realizes that her father gets a nameplate because he is in a place of importance at the university. Since Anastasia doesn’t yet hold such a position, she pushes back her timeline for getting a nameplate. The fact she only pushes it back two years reveals that she feels a sense of urgency around the matter.

“‘Read over vacation, please. Read anything.’

That seemed an odd thing to say, thought Anastasia. At home he was always saying to her, ‘Are you reading again? Don’t you ever do anything but read?’”

Anastasia’s father says this to his class before dismissing them for holiday break, and these lines reflect on the uncommonness of Anastasia’s penchant for reading. Anastasia’s silent reaction shows that she doesn’t grasp the idea of not enjoying reading or why her father begs his class to read while chiding her for it. In Anastasia’s case, her father wants to encourage her to do other activities aside from reading even though he knows it’s a good interest for her to have.

“Good grief. I had lots. Poets always do. They read poetry to women, usually young, wide-eyed women, and then the women get all misty-eyed and lick their lips a lot and next thing you know they say, ‘I love you.’ Happens all the time, to poets.”

Prior to this excerpt, Anastasia asked her father if he had any love affairs. This response is a direct contradiction to his wife’s answer, who said she had one, making it a humorous take on the difference between poets and artists. As an artist, Anastasia’s mother is portrayed as emotionally involved and deeply committed to a single work for a long time, but Anastasia’s father, as a poet, is given to short bursts of emotion, much like the short poems he writes. These lines also highlight the societal and cultural expectations of 1970s America, where women were expected to be meaningfully involved with few romantic partners while men could have many romantic entanglements without commitment.

“‘Grandmother, I wish you could go and be with him,’ said Anastasia, and then she felt frightened by what she had said. She looked across the room to where her mother and father were sitting and listening, and she knew that it had been all right to say it. She knew that they were wishing it, too.”

Anastasia’s dialogue here follows her grandmother wishing to be with Sam, her deceased husband. After speaking, Anastasia realizes her response is the same as wishing her grandmother were dead, though this is not how she meant it. When Anastasia looks to her parents for help dealing with these thoughts, she finds support, making this moment an example of coping with complex emotions. Anastasia is able to work through her emotions because she has silent help from her parents, and she realizes that it is okay to wish for her grandmother to be with Sam because it is a metaphor for wishing happiness, not death, on her.

“Anastasia thought it a very peculiar sort of bedroom and she felt a little sorry for the baby, who would be lying in a little crib looking up at glass-doored cupboards that had once held cocktail glasses. But her mother had made some nice curtains for the little window; the curtains had blue and green cross-eyed unicorns on them.”

These lines highlight Anastasia’s changing understanding of her home and family. Anastasia’s family lives in a home without enough bedrooms to accommodate a second child, suggesting they were not planning to have another baby. Anastasia’s comment shows that she is still processing the transition.

“Just for the record, everybody. I had almost changed my mind about that baby. I had almost begun to like that baby. I had almost begun to like the idea of having a brother living in the pantry, and I was even about to offer to maybe change his diapers occasionally. But just for the record for Pete’s sake, you guys shouldn’t mess around with someone who has a mercurial temperament like mine, because just for the record I have absolutely changed my mind, and I do not like that baby at all.”

Anastasia says this after being told to go away by both parents, who are stressed by taking on duties they would not normally (her father cooking dinner and her mother using tools to hang curtains). This speech is Anastasia’s way of voicing her displeasure with feeling pushed aside by the baby and the other things going on in her parents’ lives. She makes this speech to try and get attention, and it represents her attempt at coping with complex emotions. Her strong emotions of anger and abandonment prevent her from using a more constructive means of expressing her feelings, like writing lists or making comparisons to past events.

“Something felt very strange. Something was missing. Anastasia sat up in bed and looked around her room. Sometimes the Scotch tape dried out and her orangutan poster fell off the wall; but it was still there. Her Red Sox cap was on the lampshade where it always was. Her arithmetic book was on the floor, where she had left it.

Something was so definitely missing that she took her legs out from under the covers and counted her toes. They were all there.”

These lines come shortly before Anastasia realizes that there is no longer a wart on her finger and also foreshadows her discovery that her grandmother has passed away. Initially, Anastasia attributes this missing feeling to the wart, showing how even the smallest things are significant to her. In retrospect, it becomes clear the feeling is about her grandmother, and this moment shows how Anastasia has become attuned to her emotions. This highlights the theme of coping with complex emotions and represents how she’s grown since the beginning of the book.

“‘Boy,’ said Anastasia, ‘you know what I wish? I wish that everybody who loved each other would die at exactly the same time. Then nobody would have to miss anyone.’”

Anastasia says this while she’s helping her father clear out her grandmother’s room at the nursing home. The comment shows how Anastasia wants the people she cares about to avoid suffering—and wants to avoid suffering herself. It exemplifies the pressure to act in the face of uncertainty because death is the ultimate uncertainty. Anastasia is thinking up ways to make confronting death easier even if her ideas aren’t well thought-through.

“‘Yes. It was a very clear night. Millions of stars.’

‘Well, I feel absolutely sure that when Grandmother died she was looking at the sky and seeing millions of stars. Probably she was even smiling.’

‘And thinking of Sam,’ said her father.”

This excerpt is a prime example of coping with complex emotions. As in the previous quotation, logic and facts do not necessarily apply here. Anastasia’s conclusion is based in emotions and shows her coping with the loss of her grandmother by imagining a situation where she died peacefully with a beautiful sight to look at. Anastasia needs neither her green notebook nor prompting from her father to arrive at this conclusion, showing how her past writings and conversations have helped her get to this point.

“It made Anastasia feel very creepy to be talking to Mrs. Westvessel on the telephone. For some reason she didn’t like to think of Mrs. Westvessel eating, or going shopping, or watching television, or being asleep. Teachers belonged only in front of a classroom, saying the spelling words in a loud, clear voice, or telling someone to turn around and sit up straight.”

Talking to Mrs. Westvessel on the phone shatters Anastasia’s view of how the world works—specifically that teachers teach only and do not have lives outside of the classroom. This symbolizes the childhood perspective that a person’s title (such as “teacher” for Mrs. Westvessel) defines every aspect of who they are. The fact she is beginning to recognize that this isn’t true shows that she is beginning to mature and understand the complexities of other people’s lives.

“‘And I didn’t faint. For a minute I thought I was going to faint. But I didn’t.’

‘Daddy, why would you faint? That’s ridiculous.’

‘Of course it’s ridiculous. Why would a grown man faint?’”

This exchange between Anastasia and her father comes when he arrives home to bring Anastasia to the hospital after her brother is born. This references the idea promoted in American culture at the time that childbirth is meant for women only and that men do not need to know anything about the process. Anastasia’s father admitting that it was difficult for him to witness shows that he doesn’t subscribe to this stereotypical view. His rhetorical response to Anastasia’s question also shows that he doesn’t want to explain the complexities of the situation to her, letting her remain ignorant of the realities of childbirth for the moment.