YMMV / Anastasia Krupnik

• Fridge Horror:
  • Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst introduces Nicky, a violent little girl from Sam's nursery school who bullies him. Her parents are themselves implied to be abusive, as seen when her mother threatens to "whip the living daylights out of [her]" for misbehaving. At the end of the book, the Krupniks get a letter from the school saying she will be out of school for six weeks because both of her legs are broken. Draw your own conclusions...
  • And right after that, the Krupniks decide to get rid of Anastasia's gerbils by sending them as a "present" to Nicky's family, as revenge for Nicky bullying Sam and destroying the house. Those poor animals probably aren't going to last very long at the Coletti household.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In Anastasia Has the Answers (1986), Anastasia is bewildered by her mother's childhood piano teacher being named Hermione.
• Values Dissonance:
  • In Anastasia Krupnik, one of Anastasia's father's college-age students says the word "shit" in the text. The book's only nod is to wryly acknowledge that it's a word Anastasia's heard before, and for her father to lightly chide the student for using it in the classroom, where the level of discourse is expected to be a little more lofty. These days, it's unlikely that the s-word could remain uncensored in a book geared toward under-twelves.
  • In Anastasia Again!, it's mentioned that Anastasia's dad allows her to drink the foam off his beer and that he occasionally shares a sip of wine with her. Possibly a bit more eyebrow-raising is a scene in which Anastasia considers knocking out her two-year-old brother with alcohol to keep him out of the way for an afternoon.
  • In Anastasia On Her Own, Anastasia tries to help her mother with housekeeping by making organizational schedules, only to be saddled with it when Mrs. Krupnik has to fly to Los Angeles for a spontaneous project. She ends up missing an entire week of school because her dad won't reschedule university time despite Sam getting the chickenpox, and someone needs to watch him. Anastasia is only thirteen while her father is a grown adult. In the 2010s, rather than Mrs. Krupnik helping Anastasia learn to home-make, she'd probably be on her husband to be able to run a household on his own.
  • In Anastasia Has the Answers, Anastasia mentions an incident where Daphne mowed a swastika into her parents' lawn. In context, it's meant to be seen as part of Daphne's general weirdness and rebellious nature, but today it would probably be considered some kind of hate crime, especially with rising racial tensions and the growth of the American Neo-Nazi party in the 2010s.
  • In Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst, Sam's classmate from nursery school, Nicky, comes over to the Krupniks' house. When she knocks something over and makes a loud crash, her mother threatens to whip the living daylights out of her (a child who can't be older than 3 or 4), and nobody bats an eyelid. In the modern day, an incident like this would have prompted Anastasia's parents or another adult to call Child Protective Services.
• Values Resonance: When Anastasia freaks out about having a crush on a female teacher, her mother reassures her that it's okay and tells her about how she also had a crush on a female teacher when she was growing up.