Annabella In Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue

How would you feel if you had all the knowledge you ever wanted hidden under your eccentric personality with hardly anyone to share it with? In the book Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry, Annabella the dyer experiences this everyday. When Kira, a young girl with extraordinary talent, is singled out to restore a robe of history, she comes pleading to this old, four-syllable woman. Annabella not only helps her with the dyes, but also helps Kira uncover the secrets of her society. Annabella displays her wise, eccentric, and hard-working personality in all of her efforts to aid Kira. Although Annabella is from the Fen and is uneducated, she is one of the wisest people in her village. This wisdom comes from her four-syllable age as well as her knowledge of the dyes. Kira’s thoughts reflect this on page 128. “For weeks, now she had worked with the dyer. The list of plants, the many characteristics of each, the details of the dyeing procedures, so much complex knowledge; all of it so clear and complete.”(128) Kira has only been working with Annabella for a short time and she already had seen the

For instance, Kira notices how different she is at once. On page 84, Kira is asked, “Got you a guess?”(84) Annabella speaks in a different way, almost like Matt. This makes her stand out from everyone else. Moreover, Annabella firmly states her belief that there are no beasts without hesitation or doubt.(111) Once again, Annabella is the oddball. While all the villagers accept the existence of beasts as a known fact, she has to go against the flow with her opinion on the matter. Lastly, the sense of humor the master dyer has sets her apart from almost everyone else. “It’s old piss!’ she explained with a satisfied chuckle.”(84) Not many people would choose to describe a plant like this, nor find it humorous as well. Annabella is, in the most peculiar way, unusual and the “odd one