[3] They relocated in 1942 to her mother's home town in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, when Lowry's father was deployed to the Pacific during World War II.

[3] Lowry and her family lived in Carlisle again in 1950, where she attended her freshman year in high school before moving to Governors Island, New York, when her father was assigned to First Army Headquarters there.

[3] The couple moved several times from San Diego to New London, Connecticut, to Key West, Florida, to Charleston, South Carolina, to Cambridge, Massachusetts and finally to Portland, Maine.

[10] Lowry acknowledged that it was the most difficult day of her life, and she said, "His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world, but it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.

[3] An editor working at Houghton Mifflin who read the Redbook story suggested to Lowry that she should write a children's book.

[3] Lowry continued to write about difficult topics in her next publication, Autumn Street (1979), which explores themes of coping with racism, grief, and fear at a young age.

[1] The New York Times described the quartet as "less a speculative fiction than a kind of guide for teaching children (and their parents, if they're listening carefully) how to be a good person.

"[10] In early 2020, she released a book of poetry, called On the Horizon, charting her childhood memories of life in Hawaii and Tokyo, and the lives lost during the attack on Pearl Harbor and the bombing of Hiroshima.

[13] During the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, American publishing company Scholastic Corporation asked Lowry to write a new introduction to Like the Willow Tree, a story of a young girl living in Portland, Maine, who was orphaned during the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic.

[15] Throughout her works, Lowry has explored several complex issues, including racism, terminal illness, murder, the Holocaust, and the questioning of authority, among other challenging topics.

[10][18] According to the New York Times in 2012, The Giver had been perennially near the top of the America Library Association's list of banned and challenged books since its publication.

"[20] According to biographer Joel Chaston, Lowry's most critically acclaimed works are Rabble Starkey, Number the Stars, and The Giver.

[4]: ix Robin Wasserman, a writer for The New York Times, said "In many ways, Lowry invented the contemporary young adult dystopian novel", pointing out that in 1993 it was "unusual and unsettling" for children's literature to address topics of political oppression, euthanasia, suicide, or murder.

[24] Lowry has been nominated three times for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award, the highest recognition available to creators of children's books.

[28] The ALA Margaret Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work for "significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature".

Lowry's exceptional use of metaphors and subtle complexity make it a book that will be discussed, debated and challenged for years to come...a perfect teen read.