cover image Anastasia's Chosen Career

Anastasia's Chosen Career

Lois Lowry. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), $16 (142pp) ISBN 978-0-395-42506-0

The irrepressible and fun-loving Anastasia Krupnik is back in her seventh book. This time she's agonizing about a school assignment that requires her to write about her ""future career.'' But Anastasia doesn't know what she wants to do when she grows up. The answer to this dilemma, she figures, is to enroll in a modeling course, where she will develop the needed self-confidence to explore future careers. At Studio Charmante, the course instructors are not quite what Anastasia expects, and she meets a unique group of teenagers, all of whom have enrolled in the class for different reasons. Lowry has written deftly of a more mature Anastasia, one who is still inquisitive, thoughtful and funny, but who is also beginning to travel a little further from home and to confront a world that isn't as secure as the Krupnik house in Cambridge. Ages 8-12. (October)