ANASTASIA AT THIS ADDRESS
by Lois Lowry
More on-target predicaments and laugh-aloud funny dialogue from Lowry, who now takes her articulate protagonist through some seminal exchanges with the opposite sex. Anastasia has a pen pal, Septimus Smith, a 28-year-old SWM she's contacted through a personals column; meanwhile, she and her three best friends have sworn off boys (seventh-graders have little to offer, even to the girls' lively imagination)—until the four are drafted as "junior bridesmaids" to one friend's sister and wangle invitations for the boys, too. At the same time, the pen-pal correspondence flourishes; Septimus is convinced that (despite the candid 13-year-old voice of Anastasia's letters) she is the 22-year-old pictured in the snapshot of her mother that Anastasia has sent him, and that she has a sloop (Anastasia never lies: the sloop is brother Sam's bath toy). This is Anastasia in her farcical mode: credibility is stretched when Septimus turns out to be the bride's Uncle Tim, but that's part of the fun. No great insights here, but all the splendidly realized characters continue to grow. Fine entertainment; a must for fans. (Fiction. 9-13)