Posted in Book Reviews
I have to tell you, if you haven't read this book, you're really missing out. I've read it several times, and it's just as good with each read. In fact, we just read it over at the SAYR, and it made for some great discussion questions.
I'm sorry if the review seems a little Newbery heavy. The reason for that is because I cross-posted it over at my other blog, Everything Newbery.
The Giver by Lois Lowry
Jonas lives in a world as near to perfect as it can be made. Every citizen of his community respects every other citizen. Each person has his or her place. The community runs like a well-oiled machine. Jonas is perfectly happy with this—until. Until he meets the Giver. Suddenly Jonas’s wonderful perception of his community begins to rust away, flake by flake.
When I started out reading the Newbery Award and Honor books, I was basically rereading. I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time going “Well, I read this about five years ago. Should I count that as having read it for this project?” So I just decided to reread everything. We had quite a few Newbery books laying around the house, so I gathered them into a pile, and using the highly scientific method of eeny-meeny-miny-moe, began reading. None of the books were really new or exciting to me.
The Giver was one of the first Newbery books that I borrowed from the library, one that I hadn’t read yet. I think I’d kind of heard of it. But really, I wandered into it unawares, and came out grinning like some kind of overly happy clown. Looking back in my Newbery notebook, I see that I babbled somewhat incoherently about how great it was after I was finished.
What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said by dozens of other reviewers? I can tell you why I think it clicked for me. It was the mixture of depth and accessibility. When I think of a “serious” book, words like “slow-moving” and “dull” come to mind. That’s probably a wrong assumption—but that’s a topic for another post. What I liked about The Giver was that it actually moved. Yet it also made me use my brain, and challenged ideas I had taken for granted.
If you haven’t read the book, you may not want to read this paragraph of the review. I wanted to give my opinion on the ending. A lot of people seem to dislike it because of its ambiguity. Me? I didn’t mind not knowing what happened to Jonas. It was obvious to me that he was going to be fine. I wanted to know what happened to the people he left behind. What about Asher and Fiona? And Jonas’s family? Do they change for the better? Those were the questions I wanted badly to be answered.
If I had a top-ten list of Newbery books, this would make the cut. Is that recommendation enough?
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Speaking of the SAYR, we're reading our next book, Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, in a couple of weeks. I would really encourage you to sign up if you think you can make time for it. It's open to anyone, and the discussions are a lot of fun.
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