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Us and Uncle Fraud
Mysterious things begin to happen after Uncle Claude comes to stay with his sister's family. Is Uncle Claude a thief, an imposter, or just a dream waver?
148 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
4 people are currently reading
164 people want to read
About the author
Lois Lowry
145 books22.9k followersTaken from Lowry's website:
"I’ve always felt that I was fortunate to have been born the middle child of three. My older sister, Helen, was very much like our mother: gentle, family-oriented, eager to please. Little brother Jon was the only boy and had interests that he shared with Dad; together they were always working on electric trains and erector sets; and later, when Jon was older, they always seemed to have their heads under the raised hood of a car. That left me in-between, and exactly where I wanted most to be: on my own. I was a solitary child who lived in the world of books and my own vivid imagination.
Because my father was a career military officer - an Army dentist - I lived all over the world. I was born in Hawaii, moved from there to New York, spent the years of World War II in my mother’s hometown: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from there went to Tokyo when I was eleven. High school was back in New York City, but by the time I went to college (Brown University in Rhode Island), my family was living in Washington, D.C.
I married young. I had just turned nineteen - just finished my sophomore year in college - when I married a Naval officer and continued the odyssey that military life requires. California. Connecticut (a daughter born there). Florida (a son). South Carolina. Finally Cambridge, Massachusetts, when my husband left the service and entered Harvard Law School (another daughter; another son) and then to Maine - by now with four children under the age of five in tow. My children grew up in Maine. So did I. I returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, got my degree, went to graduate school, and finally began to write professionally, the thing I had dreamed of doing since those childhood years when I had endlessly scribbled stories and poems in notebooks.
After my marriage ended in 1977, when I was forty, I settled into the life I have lived ever since. Today I am back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, living and writing in a house dominated by a very shaggy Tibetan Terrier named Bandit. For a change of scenery Martin and I spend time in Maine, where we have an old (it was built in 1768!) farmhouse on top of a hill. In Maine I garden, feed birds, entertain friends, and read...
My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections. A Summer to Die, my first book, was a highly fictionalized retelling of the early death of my sister, and of the effect of such a loss on a family. Number the Stars, set in a different culture and era, tells the same story: that of the role that we humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.
The Giver - and Gathering Blue, and the newest in the trilogy: Messenger - take place against the background of very different cultures and times. Though all three are broader in scope than my earlier books, they nonetheless speak to the same concern: the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment.
My older son was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.
I am a grandmother now. For my own grandchildren - and for all those of their generation - I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."
"I’ve always felt that I was fortunate to have been born the middle child of three. My older sister, Helen, was very much like our mother: gentle, family-oriented, eager to please. Little brother Jon was the only boy and had interests that he shared with Dad; together they were always working on electric trains and erector sets; and later, when Jon was older, they always seemed to have their heads under the raised hood of a car. That left me in-between, and exactly where I wanted most to be: on my own. I was a solitary child who lived in the world of books and my own vivid imagination.
Because my father was a career military officer - an Army dentist - I lived all over the world. I was born in Hawaii, moved from there to New York, spent the years of World War II in my mother’s hometown: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from there went to Tokyo when I was eleven. High school was back in New York City, but by the time I went to college (Brown University in Rhode Island), my family was living in Washington, D.C.
I married young. I had just turned nineteen - just finished my sophomore year in college - when I married a Naval officer and continued the odyssey that military life requires. California. Connecticut (a daughter born there). Florida (a son). South Carolina. Finally Cambridge, Massachusetts, when my husband left the service and entered Harvard Law School (another daughter; another son) and then to Maine - by now with four children under the age of five in tow. My children grew up in Maine. So did I. I returned to college at the University of Southern Maine, got my degree, went to graduate school, and finally began to write professionally, the thing I had dreamed of doing since those childhood years when I had endlessly scribbled stories and poems in notebooks.
After my marriage ended in 1977, when I was forty, I settled into the life I have lived ever since. Today I am back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, living and writing in a house dominated by a very shaggy Tibetan Terrier named Bandit. For a change of scenery Martin and I spend time in Maine, where we have an old (it was built in 1768!) farmhouse on top of a hill. In Maine I garden, feed birds, entertain friends, and read...
My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections. A Summer to Die, my first book, was a highly fictionalized retelling of the early death of my sister, and of the effect of such a loss on a family. Number the Stars, set in a different culture and era, tells the same story: that of the role that we humans play in the lives of our fellow beings.
The Giver - and Gathering Blue, and the newest in the trilogy: Messenger - take place against the background of very different cultures and times. Though all three are broader in scope than my earlier books, they nonetheless speak to the same concern: the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment.
My older son was a fighter pilot in the United States Air Force. His death in the cockpit of a warplane tore away a piece of my world. But it left me, too, with a wish to honor him by joining the many others trying to find a way to end conflict on this very fragile earth.
I am a grandmother now. For my own grandchildren - and for all those of their generation - I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
April 24, 2018
In a family of six members where nothing interesting ever happens, comes a dreamer and a vagabond person, Uncle Claude. His arrival is not that significant to the other members but to the middle children, Louisa and Marcus, Uncle Claude is a promise of an adventure. Together they show Uncle Claude the empty house of the richest man of the town and at night they are excited to hear that their uncle has hidden exotic and priceless Russian eggs for them in the house. Next day Claude disappears leaving a letter to the children with a cryptic message and the children decide to search the whole house to find the eggs. Their search goes in vain and soon they receive the news that the rich man's house has been robbed. They start to fear that Claude has done it. Things start to happen very fast and by the end of the novel, the children realize the real truth behind Claude's gift to them.
The novel didn't seem that much interesting to me in the beginning but after almost half the story, I was totally into the story. I guess that's intentional on the author's part to show how the uninteresting family suddenly started to find interest in everything and how their lives started to change fast. I totally loved the concept of this book. A perfect book for children.
The novel didn't seem that much interesting to me in the beginning but after almost half the story, I was totally into the story. I guess that's intentional on the author's part to show how the uninteresting family suddenly started to find interest in everything and how their lives started to change fast. I totally loved the concept of this book. A perfect book for children.
May 22, 2020
This book wasn't what I was expecting. Is Claude a fraud, a dreamer or a schemer? He's definitely not your typical role model adult but he captures the imaginations of Louise and Marcus and turns a simple walk through town into an imaginative adventure - and also sets the stage for the follow-up mystery. Did Claude break into the Leboff home? Did he leave a treasure for Louise and Marcus to find? If so, where can it be? When the rains come, causing a tragic accident, the focus of the story shifts and Claude fades into the background.
Though Lowry's books have varied content she claims “all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections.” So maybe the point of "Us and Uncle Fraud" is that no one is all good or all bad. We're flawed. But in the end we love each other despite our (and their) shortcomings.
Though Lowry's books have varied content she claims “all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections.” So maybe the point of "Us and Uncle Fraud" is that no one is all good or all bad. We're flawed. But in the end we love each other despite our (and their) shortcomings.
August 13, 2017
Confession: my favorite Lois Lowry books are not her Newbery winners, The Giver or Number the Stars, no matter how tremendous they may be. They're not even her classic Anastasia Krupnik series. They're her run of realistic middle grade novels from the 80s: Taking Care of Terrific, The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline, Switcharound, Us and Uncle Fraud. I checked these books out from the library repeatedly. I couldn't have told you about the high-quality sentence-level writing or the unique, well-drawn characters. I probably would have told you they were "just good stories."
Confession: I basically want to be Lois Lowry. No Newberys necessary. Lois Lowry of the 80s.
Of the aforementioned books, it had been longest since I reread Us and Uncle Fraud, but I know I must have read it several times over. Countless times, my brain pinged with recognition of a certain phrase. I recalled almost every plot point, with the notable exception of (ironically) the one that was arguably most important. What I didn't remember was the odd formality of the writing. It's in first person, yet the 11-year-old narrator sounds very adult and retrospective. That or the narrator is adult, looking back on her childhood, but that's never clear. The time period is unclear as well. It's obviously during the Cold War, but there's nothing that feels very "1984" (the publication year, nothing to do with George Orwell) about it except for younger sister Stephanie's name. Often it feels like it takes much longer ago. It's also got a lot of sadness and bitterness to it, which in the context of the story makes sense... but wow. No wonder people don't love this one the way they do Lowry's other light-hearted 80s novels. It's heavy.
Not Lowry's best work by any stretch, but it's better than most authors will ever have to offer... and I still wish I could write that well!
Confession: I basically want to be Lois Lowry. No Newberys necessary. Lois Lowry of the 80s.
Of the aforementioned books, it had been longest since I reread Us and Uncle Fraud, but I know I must have read it several times over. Countless times, my brain pinged with recognition of a certain phrase. I recalled almost every plot point, with the notable exception of (ironically) the one that was arguably most important. What I didn't remember was the odd formality of the writing. It's in first person, yet the 11-year-old narrator sounds very adult and retrospective. That or the narrator is adult, looking back on her childhood, but that's never clear. The time period is unclear as well. It's obviously during the Cold War, but there's nothing that feels very "1984" (the publication year, nothing to do with George Orwell) about it except for younger sister Stephanie's name. Often it feels like it takes much longer ago. It's also got a lot of sadness and bitterness to it, which in the context of the story makes sense... but wow. No wonder people don't love this one the way they do Lowry's other light-hearted 80s novels. It's heavy.
Not Lowry's best work by any stretch, but it's better than most authors will ever have to offer... and I still wish I could write that well!
April 26, 2017
I'm halfway through -- an underrated time to review a book, let me tell you. But it's the perfect time, at least for this book! Because I have no idea what's going to happen. I'm still undecided whether Uncle Fraud really is a fraudster, which feels great and awful all at once. He's like that cat we all learned about in physics (or from The Big Bang Theory :). The hope for humanity I hold in my heart, as it rests on the actions of Uncle Claude, is at this moment both alive and dead, just like that cat.
Or it's like a coin toss. The hopeful part of me knows beyond a doubt that it's gonna come up heads. And "that other half" of me knows -- beyond a doubt -- it's gonna come up stinky, smelly tails instead. Don't let me down, Fraud. Ya bastard.
Or it's like a coin toss. The hopeful part of me knows beyond a doubt that it's gonna come up heads. And "that other half" of me knows -- beyond a doubt -- it's gonna come up stinky, smelly tails instead. Don't let me down, Fraud. Ya bastard.
September 7, 2022
Really enjoyable. Lowry was always so good at not writing down to children about realistic things, including family dynamics and adults who disappoint.
January 4, 2025
I enjoyed this much more than the other two I was reading at the same time. It was a real page turner with believable character. Wonderful growth in the children. Quite exciting in parts. I liked how the children came to understand that people aren't perfect, but are wonderful in their own special ways.
November 4, 2018
I loved this book as a kid and read it over and over again. I was a big Lois Lowry fan, but this was my favorite. I really liked the ambiguity and ideas. Being let down, being deceived, hope, need, mystery. Family outcasts. Great book!
December 30, 2017
An interesting story. It did not go where I expected it to go.
December 13, 2018
As I officially end my Reading Challenge this year, I thought of reading something heartwarming and Lois Lowry does not disappoint.
June 14, 2020
My grandmother read this to me when I was about six, and I remembered lots of things about the plot but not the point of the story. So it has been fun to re-read it as an adult.
September 29, 2008
This book is about a family that has a traveler and a dreamer come and visit the family after many years- Uncle Claude.
When he comes to visit the show him how to get inside a neighbors house while they were gone (the most dangerous thing they could think of).
That night, the Uncle told his nephews about Russian eggs and how they are covered with jewels and a great treasure. He told the kids that he would hide a couple eggs in the house for them to find. The next day he disappeared and the neighbors had been robbed. The kids look around the house for the eggs, but have a hard time finding them. The kids suspect that it was their Uncle that robbed the neighbors house.
When he comes to visit the show him how to get inside a neighbors house while they were gone (the most dangerous thing they could think of).
That night, the Uncle told his nephews about Russian eggs and how they are covered with jewels and a great treasure. He told the kids that he would hide a couple eggs in the house for them to find. The next day he disappeared and the neighbors had been robbed. The kids look around the house for the eggs, but have a hard time finding them. The kids suspect that it was their Uncle that robbed the neighbors house.
January 22, 2016
This is a fun, thoughtful little book. While perfect for intermediate grades, I think there is enough to the story to appeal to some older readers who want a quick read.
August 7, 2013
This is a sweet book and I love Lois Lowry.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews