“Writing is my passion, as are young people,” says author Lois Lowry. “To be able to combine the two in a career has brought me enormous satisfaction.” Lowry, author of classics such as The Giver and Number the Stars, has been publishing young adult novels for decades. She has a simple secret to keeping her books relevant: she avoids trends. “I try instead to address more pervasive themes that resonate with all ages, to raise questions that can provoke discussion and thought among 12-year-olds, and then the same people 10 years later, and 10 years after that,” she says. Although her work has won many awards, including two Newbery Medals, Lowry says her proudest accomplishments have been moments. “Nothing is more gratifying than hearing that a kid and a grandparent are together reading—and talking about— an issue that I have raised in a book,” Lowry says. The part-time Maine resident and University of Southern Maine graduate recalls a time when a teacher told her a student used Number the Stars to teach his mother to read. To keep books in children’s hands, the author has spent a lot of her time fighting against book banning. Literacy and artistic freedom are both very important to her. “My book The Giver depicts a society which, under the guise of protecting its citizens, has lost all art, music, and literature,” Lowry says. “It really is a manifesto for a free society.”