The Windeby Puzzle, by Lois Lowry

     From one of the very few authors that has won the coveted Newbery Award twice (when even winning once is remarkable), comes this really unique story that mixes history with fiction...but not in the traditional way! The Windeby Puzzle is the story of the Windeby Girl, a skeleton found in a bog in Germany in the 1950s in an area of the country named Windeby (a bog is a lot like a swamp, except less water and more firm - firm enough to hold a body, for example). At that time scientists believed the body was one of a teen girl. After years of study, later scientists decided the body was actually a teen boy. Much of the body was still intact - hair, skin, a blindfold over its eyes - it was really an amazing find...and it was determined to be about 2,000 years old!

    Author Lois Lowry took the facts surrounding the Windeby body and created one possible story behind how the body ended up in the bog at all. She did her research about life in that time and tried to create a realistic story about the body, and how it met this fate. She starts with a story about Estrild, a girl in a village who really wants to be a warrior, something only boys could be. Estrild was friends with a sickly boy named Varick who was helping her realize her dream to be the first girl warrior in her village.

    Then Lowry wrote a second story, where Varick ends up being the body in the bog. Different perspective, different reasons for being Estrild's friend, but the same end result. In between these two stories the author tries to share her thoughts behind her creation based on what life would have been like 2,000 years ago. It really is a unique way to approach a piece of archeology and world history, and I appreciated this as I read the book. I can't say she hit a home run with the book overall, but she gets a lot of credit for trying something like this. I don't know if I've ever read a book put together in quite this way.

    Lowry is as accomplished as any teen author, with books like The Giver and Number the Stars in her writing repertoire. This book would not have been as good in many other hands, I believe. So I give her a lot of credit for this creative approach, even if the overall effect wasn't as solid as some of her other, award-winning books. But a cool idea and a decent book, worth a read! 4 paws!