An Author Interview with Lois Lowry

Two-time Newbery Award-winning author Lois Lowry returns with a new dystopian novel in the tradition of her best-known book, The Giver. Building 903 is set in the not-so-distant future, in a world devoid of creativity and imagination. When protagonist Tessa’s twin brother, Theo, goes missing, she and her parents must use the newly discovered power of stories to find and save Theo and set imagination free. Deep dive into the imagination of Lois in this question-and-answer interview!

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Building 903 takes us to the year 2099. What do you find most interesting and most frightening when imagining what the future might bring?

The most frightening is the thing I avoided writing about: what science and technology will bring to us in the coming decades. But I was the kid who successfully made my way through high school, college, and graduate school without ever taking a chemistry, physics, or higher mathematics course. My curiosity lay elsewhere and still does, so I wasn’t equipped to hypothesize what technological dangers lie ahead in a post-nuclear age. Instead I focused on something that seems to me equally frightening; the collapse of a free and fair electoral system.

But there are positives, as well, which will certainly be true in our own future world: speed and ease of travel, for one. Next month, for example, I have to get myself from Portland, Maine to Nashville, Tennessee; it means a long day of tedious and expensive travel. In Tessa and Theo’s world it would be a simple whoosh.

Was there any particular moment, event, or headline that helped inspire the world that Tessa and Theo live in?

The one particular ongoing and distressing process that has been much in the news, and which has been gnawing at me, has been the gradual dissolution and abandonment of the study of literature in high schools and colleges. Tessa, my fictional character, is a bright 14-year-old girl who has never read a story or a novel. But for a school assignment she’s taking meticulous notes on the production of asphalt. Something has gone terribly wrong there.

The magic of books is an important element in the story. How do you think books transport and transform us? Do you think books have the power to save the world?

I don’t think books per se have that power, but the combination of information and imagination does, and right now, books are the vehicle for that. In the future, eventually, the rectangular paged objects that we now call books will probably not exist, but whatever methodology supplants them – whatever causes human minds to expand and empathize and experience emotion – that’s what will save the world.

If books were being outlawed and destroyed in our world, what are some that you would want to box up and hide away?

I’d box up the same children’s books that Miriam Allinson did, in Building 903, but I’d add to that (a lot of boxes!) the entire reading list from the curriculum at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.

What was the hardest part about writing this story?

I made a bit of a departure in this book. We who write for young people are very aware that our readers enjoy reading about their peers – the interactions among people their age. They’re not particularly interested in the parents, who generally appear largely offstage in YA books, but I made a conscious (though difficult) decision that this book would be primarily about two 14-year-old kids – and their mother and father, and one much older woman. The hard part was to try to make those non-teenage characters complex and interesting.

What’s something about life today that you hope readers will ponder after reading Building 903?

I say this so often to the many, many young people who email me every day with questions: you’re the ones who’ll create the future.I hope they’ll ponder the responsibility that places upon them and at the same time become happily aware that they can make things better.

About the Author

Learn more about Lois Lowry and her work. >