Anastasia Krupnik

Anastasia Krupnik is a middle grade novel by American author Lois Lowry and the first book in her nine-part Anastasia children’s series. Published in 1979, it follows the 10-year-old titular protagonist as she deals with the ups and downs of everyday life in her Boston hometown and anticipates the birth of her baby brother. The book was nominated for major awards, including the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award and the California Young Readers Medal. Author and playwright Meryl Friedman adapted Anastasia Krupnik for the stage, and the production debuted in Chicago in 1998.

Originally a freelance writer, Lowry has written dozens of books for children and adults over the course of her career. She is best known for her Giver quartet—The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000), Messenger (2004), and Son (2012). The Giver and the stand-alone title Number the Stars (1989) have both won Newberry Awards, and many of her other books have been finalists and nominees for major awards. Lowry’s work deals with difficult themes, and some of her books, including The Giver and the Anastasia series, have been banned from schools and libraries. A classic coming-of-age story, Anastasia Krupnik deals with themes such as Coping with Complex Emotions, The Difficulty of Forming an Identity, and The Pressure to Act in the Face of Uncertainty.

This guide follows the Clarion Books kindle edition of Anastasia Krupnik based on the 1979 hardcover.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of illness, death, and references to death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Anastasia Krupnik is told in 11 episodic chapters, where each chapter is a self-contained story with little narrative link to the other chapters. Chapter 1 introduces Anastasia, her literature professor/poet father, and her artist mother. The family lives in Boston, Massachusetts, where Anastasia contends with the everyday struggles of being a 10-year-old girl. Chapter 1 establishes that Anastasia has lots of complex emotions and thoughts that she doesn’t always know how to handle, and to make sense of these, she makes lists and observations in a green notebook no one is allowed to read but her.

At the beginning of the novel, the greatest source of stress in Anastasia’s life is her grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease and struggles to remember current events and people. Thinking of her grandmother makes Anastasia feel angry and scared, and she transfers these emotions onto anything that reminds her of her grandmother. 

A new source of conflict arrives in Anastasia’s life when her mother announces that she will be having a baby boy in a few months. At first, this enrages Anastasia because she doesn’t understand why her parents need another child when they already have her. She tries to run away from home, but her father talks her into staying by letting her name the baby. Anastasia thinks up the worst name she can and keeps it secret in her green notebook.

Anastasia makes many decisions based on factors that seem important to her in the moment. One of these is the choice to become Catholic because many of the kids in her class at school are Catholic. When one of the Catholic girls in her class tells her she’s too old, Anastasia refuses to accept no as an answer and decides to seek a dispensation from the church to become Catholic. However, when she learns she needs to confess the negative thoughts she’s had and be truly sorry for having them, Anastasia decides being a Catholic isn’t for her.

During the holiday season, Anastasia spends time around her grandmother, which frustrates her because her grandmother can’t remember Anastasia’s name. Despite this, Anastasia finds comfort in her grandmother’s presence, which makes her feel bad for feeling frustrated. To help Anastasia grapple with her feelings, she asks her grandmother about her long-dead husband, Sam. Anastasia’s grandmother has many fond memories of Sam, and Anastasia decides she truly feels sad, not mad or scared, about her grandmother.

Shortly after Christmas, Anastasia’s grandmother passes away, and Anastasia realizes she truly loved her. She goes with her father to clean out her grandmother’s room at the nursing home, where the two find a box of keepsakes. They realize her grandmother was happy, even with her memory loss, and Anastasia gains a new appreciation for the importance of memory and family. The same day, Anastasia’s brother is born. Seeing the baby makes Anastasia realize she doesn’t hate him after all, and instead of the terrible name she wrote in her green notebook, she names him Sam, after her grandfather.