ANASTASIA AT YOUR SERVICE

Another amusing visit with Anastasia Krupnik, new 12 and in desperate need of money (for what is not said). So Anastasia advertises herself as a companion—but, to her horror, the rich old lady who hires her puts her to work as a maid instead. And as site mangles a spoon in the disposal on the first day, she can't quit until she's paid off its $35.00 value in labor. (As Mrs. Bellingham, her employer, refers to the incident as a "debacle," Anastasia believes throughout the story that she is paying for a mangled "bockle.") But during her service Anastasia becomes friends with Mrs. Bellingham's rebellious granddaughter Daphne, and together they plot revenge on the old lady: Daphne steals a pile of leftover invitations to her grandmother's upcoming charity bash and sends them to a few of the town's outcasts and underprivileged. The girls repent too late, on learning that the charity is the children's hospital in which Anastasia's little brother has just been a patient—and then try desperately, with the predictable hilarious results, to spot the undesirables and remove them from the party. After Daphne mistakenly asks the mayor to leave, Mrs. Bellingham questions the girls and concludes: "Surely it is apparent by new that those people, whatever their problems, know how to behave ata party.' Along with a Roots trip Anastasia takes with her father to the poor-but-charming (new Italian) Boston neighborhood where he grew up, it all goes to inculcate in Anastasia some corny and unexamined American myths. But as Lowry uses these egalitarian lessons to anchor the story, not vice versa, readers won't feel manipulated.