The Writing Life: Lois Lowry

"Did you like that poem?" Grandfather asked, with a smile. It was 1943. We were living in my grandfather's house in Carlisle, Pa., while my father was overseas during the war. Somehow he had been coerced into the bedtime reading ritual.

"Yes," I lied.

I was 5 1/2 years old. Of course, I didn't like the poem. Choosing from his extensive collection of high-brow literature, he had just read "Thanatopsis," by William Cullen Bryant. It was long, wordy and pious -- and way over my small blond head. My 8-year-old sister had opted out early, announcing, "That's boring," and leaving the book-lined room where I still sat on Grandfather's lap.

Though my glance slid surreptitiously, wistfully, to the table where Alice in Wonderland lay waiting for my mother to resume reading to me, I nestled against my grandfather's vest, resigned to live with my lie.

At 5, I was less needy than my newborn brother and less literate than my sister. But with the "yes" (such a short, easy word) I could feel myself grow in my grandfather's esteem. After that evening I felt more interesting to him, more worthy of his time and attention. He smiled politely when the new baby was displayed and raised an eyebrow in good-humored disdain when my sister described the plot of a Nancy Drew book. But with me, occasionally, he shared a fond look of you-and-me-ness that I had bought with my one-syllable fib.

I was 8 the day that I took my brother for a walk at my mother's request. Jonny had been a nuisance all day, into everything, whining and refusing to nap. Finally, she buttoned him into his blue corduroy jacket and buckled him into the wicker stroller. "Just take him around the block a couple of times," she told me.

"She agreed to take her little brother for a walk," I composed narcissistically in my head as I set off down College Street, jouncing the stroller over the uneven brick sidewalk. "It was hard work, but her frail, ill mother (well, she had mentioned a headache) needed the help, and the little girl was the only helpful person around." (True. My 11-year-old sister had groaned, "Do I have to? I have homework," when Mother asked her first.)

"He was a sweet baby. His big blue eyes matched his jacket." I tried out a few descriptive phrases about my brother in my ongoing narrative, substituting charm for the obnoxiousness he'd been displaying all morning. Already, at 8, I had a sense of audience. I prettied up his description, ignoring his encrusted nostrils and the bad cold that had made him so cranky. And I sweetened his disposition, aware that readers might not like my toddler protagonist if they knew he had gotten into my art supplies just an hour earlier and broken my best crayons.

I turned the corner onto Pomfret Street and noticed two gray-haired women coming toward me, probably heading home from Barnhart's Grocery. "The old ladies smiled when they saw the pretty little girl pushing her brother's stroller," my story continued. And that part was mostly true. Who wouldn't smile, watching a little girl maneuver a big stroller over the bumpy bricks?

I stopped, savoring their approval. "Aren't you a good girl, taking your brother for a walk?" one of them said, and I blushed and nodded in agreement.

Then, suddenly, one of the women leaned down and picked up my brother's chubby hand. She examined it, then turned and said in a low voice to her companion, "This child has been badly burned."

I cringed, embarrassed. That morning, angry at Jonny when he had broken my crayons, I had uncapped the tube of cement that I used for my art projects and smeared the colorless ooze across my brother's hand in a "There, take that!" gesture. The cement had dried instantly into a shiny crust and was still there, glistening, slightly wrinkled and cracked. Now I was going to have to explain and perhaps apologize to this stranger for being a vindictive brat.