The Giver by Lois Lowry

I just finished this book and felt that this was one of the strongest juvenile fiction titles I have ever read. It's very intense for young readers, however, it introduces themes that are important concepts.

It's a future society set up as a utopia on first reading, however, the society has governed itself with rules that has the society appear more as a dystopia than a utopia. Very strong characters. Strong ending that left me thinking. I just finished the companion novel -- Gathering Blue and am starting the third in this trilogy, The Messenger. You can't put them down. Lowry bonds the reader to her characters and you read to stay with them.

I really enjoyed the book until the end, which I found disappointing. I haven't gotten around to reading the second and third books (yet!).

I also thought it was very powerful, and an excellent book. The ending was too vague for me, but I could appreciate the quality of it, especially for a juv fic title that allows the reader to project emotion and theme comprehension into the story.

I've read the sequels are related to, but not a continuation of, this book...?

Definitely recommendable... 6th grade & up?

Teach: yep, the other 2 books are more companions, than sequels.

I think I originally read the Giver in middle school, and I remember being shocked by parts of it. Which I think is a good thing, not much I read usually shocks me, even when I was in middle school.

i love the ending of the giver. it allows the readers to interpret it and give the final memory to the character. the first time i read it, i was really moved by the perfection of the life, that it was actually dull. :) one of the best books i have ever read.

While I enjoyed The Giver and found it engaging and powerful, I didn't love it.

I had a hard time with the idea that the characters can't see colors. Maybe Lowry is trying to convey the idea that the society downplays individuality to the extent that its members actually stop seeing differences, but this just doesn't work for me. Silly though it may seem, this actually detracts from my enjoyment of the story.

And yes, count me among those dissatisfied with the ending. While many readers love an open ending, I tend to like my conclusions to be...conclusive.

Although I'm not always a fan of ambiguous endings, I think it was the most appropriate way for The Giver to wrap up, especially because it's a YA novel--in other words, geared toward younger readers who are still learning to think and question information. A concrete ending with a single interpretation would have adversely affected their options to do so.

In fact, I like the ambiguous ending so much that I have no plans to read the companion books, because of their potential to limit some of the many (often incompatible) conclusions I've drawn about The Giver's world.

excellent point! I'm going to add that to my notes for future use, if you don't mind...

7> I hadn't thought of it in this way; intriguing perspective.

It is my understanding that the companion books have nothing to do with the first book, but maybe others could chime in on that.

8> Go ahead! (Wow, I don't think anything I've said has ever been incorporated into a curriculum before;) )

9> Thanks. My parents read to me constantly when I was a child, and made sure to ask lots of open-ended questions about every book we finished, which helped form my opinions on such things.

Still not sure if I'll ever look at the other books, though. Sometimes I feel like authors (or their publishers perhaps) don't want to let their stories be, and while ambiguous endings don't bother me, I don't like endless additions to finished storylines...