Book: The Giver

The Giver

by Lois Lowry

Length: 180 pages

Format: Hardback
Price: Free - borrowed from school

Basic Premise: Jonas, an 11-year-old boy, and all in his community are kind, respectful, hardworking, and happy.  When Jonas and his peers turn twelve, they receive their long awaited job assignments which will last them until the end of their days.  When Jonas is named "Receiver of Memory" he begins to understand that all in his world is not quite so well as he had once believed.

My Take: 9 out of 10 (scale here) 

I remember this book from elementary school because my 4th grade teacher read us The Wish Giver right around the time this book came out.  I got the two confused and went through high school thinking I had read The Giver.  When I had to (what I thought was) reread in college, I realized I had never read this book.  I would have remembered this one.

It was published in 1993 by Lois Lowry, the author of my beloved Number the Stars.  It's really a dystopian novel about 15 years before dystopia got cool. But why did I reread this book in the midst of my mad dash to finish all the books still left on my list?  Because my Language Arts teacher and I did something I've never done before - we flipped classes for a day - she taught my literature circle discussion and I read chapters 11-13 out loud to her kids.  And ohmygoodness.  I forgot what a good book this is.  I got to read *spoiler alert* the part where the reader learns that these people cannot see color.  Kids were freaking out all over the place.  The book had only referred to people's "light" and "dark" eyes - not blue and brown.  The kids realized they had assumed.  They were like, "Mrs. Stones, we need more sticky notes."  It was awesome.  I decided I had to pick it back up, so I read chapters 1-10 and skipped to 14 to the end.  I read it in two days, and that was over lunch and after my kids went to sleep.  I found myself wishing I was teaching this novel.  There are layers upon layers upon layers of meaning, and the kids were eating it up.  Props to our Language Arts teacher for priming these kids!