The Giver by Louis Lowry

Lowry, Lois. The Giver. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1993.

In a different kind of society, Jonas is about to turn 12 and receive his career assignment for the rest of his life, but what first may seem a paradise comes into question when Jonas meets his new mentor, The Giver.

AWARDS

1994 Newbery Medal
1996 William Allen White Award
American Library Association “Best Book for Young Adults”
A Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor Book
Winner of the Regina Medal
Booklist Editors’ Choice
A School Library Journal Best Book of the Year

REVIEW

There are no animals anywhere and no one even knows what an animal is. Everyone in Jonas’s community was assigned their career at age 12; if you’re 11 and under, you’re waiting for it to happen. Every morning at breakfast, his family members talk about–or confess to–their dreams, and every night, they are required to talk about their feelings. Everyone follows the rules, because if they don’t, they face the worst fate imaginable: release from the community. On his 12th birthday, Jonas receives a very special assignment: he is to be his community’s Receiver of Memory. But when he meets the elderly old Receiver, now The Giver, he learns what happened to the last 12 assigned to receive, and he knows things he wish he never knew. Just 16-years-old and already a classic, no one can tell you more than The Giver.

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