Rating: 
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: Gathering Blue Walter Lorraine, 2000, 215 pages, $15.00
Lois Lowry ISBN0-618-05581-9 Kira is a fairly young girl. She has never hurt anyone and is very kind. Kira has a gift, a gift of threading. She was never taught, but it comes to her like "magic". There is something that is a burden to Kira, her leg, it is twisted. She is never considered useful in her village and is wanted gone. Kira's talent comes into effect and it saves her life. As a threader she also needs to dye her own threads, she does so, but has no blue. Now it is up to Kira to find the truth about why her and two others, to whom which she grows really close, are brought together. Read this book and enjoy the adventure, the danger, the sadness as Kira and her friends are Gathering Blue. I would recommend this book to anyone with an imagination and who loves a discovery full of secrets. I started reading this book and wasn't able to put it down. Once you start reading it neither will you! Lois Lowry really brings fantasy into your heart and allows you to imagine a new and different world. I will definately give it a 10 out of 10, two thumbs up!!
Rating: 
Summary: Mixed Opinions
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed The Giver by Lois Lowry, which is why I continued on to read Gathering Blue, expecting it to be like the original. Wow, did I get a surprise! To summarize--the story revolves around a young orphan girl named Kira, who was born with a twisted leg, leaving her handicapped. She lives in a time and place when people are cruel, greedy, selfish, uneducated and tend to scorn the weak. Like The Giver, the village is ruled by a strong committee of high, authoritative figures who strictly control everyone's lives and actions. In the beginning of the story, Kira's mother dies of illness (supposedly her father was killed before she was born) and the women in the village turn on her. But before long, the Council of Guardians learn of her phenomenal gift of embroidery and threading cloth and take her in to live in the Council Edifice. At first, Kira feels blessed to be living in such high quarters, but soon she finds clues of disturbance in the Council. During the entire story, her journey of finding the lost color of blue is never-ending. Because she has been assigned to thread the Singer's ancient robes, she feels it's her duty to also thread it with blue. But during the ages, the color has diminished into the past ... or has it? I felt that Lois Lowry used good writing skills to create and "thread" this story, but the story itself wasn't constructed well enough for the reader to really understand the world Kira was living in. This novel was very halting, and often times I got confused because there weren't enough in-depth details. But overall I enjoyed this story of courage, curiosity and how humans deal with trying times. I would advise people who like books that leave a lot of imagination to the reader and don't have a lot of construction to consider this book.
Rating: 
Summary: A pretty good read
Review: After reading "The Giver" by Lowry I thought I might give this book a try. In Blue we are presented with a society in which there is no technology and the cripples are done away with in many cases. Kira, the main character,is an exception because she shows exceptional apptitude for weaving. After her mother dies she is taken to a palace like area where she is provided with all types of weaving materials. She's also given a task of weaving the singers robe. Through a round about way Kira discovers that there are other societies where cripples are welcomed. There is more to the story than what I've described here, but not much. It seems like some of the substance didn't exist like it did in "The Giver". A good book, but not quite a good as "The Giver". I'll be curious to see how the 3rd book in this series turns out.
Rating:
Summary: Good...but could have been better.
Review: Gathering Blue is a companion book to "The Giver." Lois Lowry really disappointed me. The writing was so dull. The end was very abrupt; few details. The end left the reader confused.
The whole story overall is not too bad though. In other words Story = good. Writing = bad.
Rating: 
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: This book was an awful book. I don't understand why this book is supposed to be so good. I would rather read some Barney book than this. The ending of the book was really confusing. I don't recomend it to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: Awe Inspiring*
Review: Lois Lowry hits a high note with her fantastic book, Gathering Blue. I loved it! It wasn't very adventerous, but it was extremely descriptive. I could picture the whole thing in my mind, like a move. The book is about a girl named Kira, who has exraordinary weaving skills. When her mother dies, the towns people want to throw her to the beasts, because of her twisted leg. But, the Council of Elders saves her from a very brutal death. Now Kira has a special task. However, this task is very difficult without the color blue, which is very rare in her village. Will Kira ever find the blue that is so mystical to her?
Rating:
Summary: Touching and quite imaginative
Review: I have often thought about the various futures of this world, and in gathering blue we find one outcome that is strangely real, and although it lays in the future, it resembles life of centuries forgotten. This novel is a sequel to "The Giver", which I read after and loved as well. It stands strongly by itself and I urge anyone to read it. :)
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Summary: More Like The Giver
Review: I thought this book was an okay book. I read it mainly because I had read the Giver and loved that book. This is the sequel to it and I wanted it to be something like the Giver was, the same kind of village and a reminiscent struggle between the main character and everyone else. But this had a new setting almost, with different town rules. There were different jobs and many new events. The two books have no characters that are the same. The only thing that I can see a connection between the two books is the style of writing, where they leave it very mysterious. I also thought that the story got better near the end, but did not have an ending I liked. It had a lot of momentum, and then it just stopped dead in its tracks. The story is about a girl named Kira, who has a crippled leg, whose mother just died and now she is all alone. Her home is burned to the ground and now she has to start all over on her own. Vandara, a bitter village leader, wants Kira to be killed because she is worthless with her crippled leg and can't do the jobs a regular women would do. But she has an unusual talent. She is a incredibly gifted weaver of threads. With this talent, she plans to fight her way through the trial that stands before her. I thought it was an overall good book.
Rating:
Summary: Threading is not enough
Review: Have you ever had the whole world against you? Or people that wanted you dead.Well that's what happens in the beginning of Gathering Blue. This girl named Kira has only her mom because her dad died when she was still in the wound. Her mom got sick and died. She was all she had until this girl named Vandera takes her cott and makes her live in the council Hall. She lives there because the council makes her fix the singers robe. Only the best can fix it. She then starts getting clues that everyone that she was living by had a special gift and all their parents had died to. So then her little friend goes on a trip to find her the missing color blue for her threads he finds her dad. Which comes to tell her that the council that saved her life and took her in was the same man that tryed killing him. They come together but when he asks her to come back she refuses to beacuse she has to finish creating the rest of the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Not that great
Review: I really did not like Gathering Blue, by Lois Lowry, at all. The plot and characters were okay, but the ending was terrible. Throughout the whole book she is leading up to something, but in the end she just ditches it and starts on a completely new path. I wouldn't mind it as much if she at least gave you enough information about the new path, but it's like she's driving down a straight road, and can see where she wants to end up, but then she suddenly, and for no apparent reason, makes a hairpin turn, turns off the car and gets out. There are about a million ideas and inferences that the reader makes that she just leaves hanging. For instance, during the course of the book, Kira (the main character) finds out about many mysteries that surround the stories that the counsel men tell the people of her village. She also finds out some secrets about the position of "Singer." But after she finds out about these, she just resigns herself to her fate. She doesn't take her chance to get away, and she doesn't try to do anything about it, at least not that Lowry says or hints at.
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