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Gathering Blue

Gathering Blue

List Price: $6.50
Your Price: $5.85
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: The book Gathering Blue, written by Lois Lowry, is a great book. The book is based on the story of a girl named Kira. Kira lost her mother to a horrible disease and is now facing the challenge of rebuilding her life. This wonderful plot keeps you hooked the whole time. Following her mother's death Kira is taken to the Council of Guardians to face her fate. Keeping in mind that she could be put to death at any point, the Council of Guardians has something else in store for her. Kira is appointed to be the new seamstress for the singer's robe. She will repair tears, and replace the old threads of the most important robe in the community. As the book moves along Kira starts to realize the pain the community has had to endure in its past. Through out this book we experience two settings, Kira's community and the future.

The reason for this particular title is explained in the story. Through-out this book Kira is working with flowers trying to make different colors for the singer's robe. This is also a very familiar symbol through out the whole book. The only color Kira is not able to make is blue, as no one else is able to make this color either. Later on in the book Kira makes friends with an old blind man. He plays a special role in this book because he is brought into this plot wearing a bright blue shirt. This is not the only thing that is special about Kira's new friend. Kira learns many new things from this man and he eventually earns a very special place in Kira's heart. One extraordinary thing her new friend teaches her is how to make the color blue.

I had a great time reading this book and I would recommend to many people. I would recommend this book to more of a fantasy-loving crowd because, this book portrayed a lot more fantasy than reality. This book not only intrigued me but the emotions in this book were very realistic. Not to mention the twists in the plot were great and kept me reading the whole way through. I gave this book a 4 star rating.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: "Gathering Blue" is about a girl named Kira, who was born with a twisted leg and the skill to weave good-looking cloth. Usually the village people would take distorted babies to the field, a place where someone who was dead or deformed would apparently be eaten by animals. But, her mother protested, and since Kira's father was going to be a member of the Council of Guardians when he returned from a hunt, they let her stay. It happened that her father never returned and many villagers said that he was killed by animals.
After her mother died because of an unknown disease, the Council of Guardians invited her to join them. Her job at the Council was to prepare the singer's robe, a robe worn once a year by a man who sang about her people's past. The job of preparing the singer's robe was not easy because the robe had many tiny stitches. When she finished this job she had to fill in an open space with stitches. The one color she didn't have was blue, and this was the one color she wanted. While she completed the task of the singer's robe, she discovered many secrets of the Council and its helpers.
I thought this was a good book, but I liked "The Giver" better. This book describes Kiras feelings very good. This is a good book for you, especially if you enjoy irregular stories.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: Gathering Blue is a book of adventure into the future. I did not realize it was about the future until my teacher addressed it. I thought it was about a tribe and how they lived and special events.
The story takes place in a village. The plot of the story was pretty interesting. The exposition came out a tad confusing and low in my interest. But then at the court scene and Vandara came into the picture it got more exciting. Kira is the protagonist of the story. She is young teen that goes through a lot of stressful occasions, which a teen would not and should not have to go through, especially alone. She is born without a father and is cripple, he mother dies and Vandara threatens her all in the beginning of the story. Vandara is the antagonist of the story. She wanted Kira out because she took up space and ate too much. Talk about a lot of pressure.
The rising action of the story, I think, would be when Kira goes to court and is granted the right to stay. She becomes the repairer of the singers robe. Matt is the funny character, gives the reader a comedic relief. He is only about 9 or 10 and he likes being dirty, along with his dog Branch. Kira lives in a nice building with running hot water, gets plenty of food and she has her freedom. Thomas, the future carver of the singer's staff lives there too. She and him become great friends. Annabella is the old woman who teaches Kira to dye threads. Unfortunately she dies, which was never expected. The climax is when they are at the festival and matt has a surprise for Kira. It is her father, Christopher. He is an old blind man. Christopher wants to take Kira home with him, to a village with mostly cripple people live and they take care of one another. So they can be a family. The resolution is when Kira says no to her father.
I think the tone of the story is sorrow, relieved, joyful, and comedic at times. The theme of Gathering Blue could be "life is about taking chances, making choices and standing up for yourself, when you are put down by others. Never let someone else tell you, you don't have talent and let your true colors shine." The point of view is third person limited.
I liked Gathering Blue, at first I thought it was not too interesting, but later it got into it. Honestly, it is not the types of books I like to read, but it ended up being a good story. A lot of my classmates said they didn't like the ending. I thought it was a fine ending, I predicted that people killed his father not beasts, but I didn't expect him to really be alive. Overall I thought it was a good book and I enjoyed it.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Yes, the future is dim
Review: If modern Western civilization crumbled, what would be the result? Gathering Blue, the companion novel to Lois Lowry's Newbury Award winner The Giver, presents one such insight. Kira, the protagonist, is a 12-year old girl who inhabits a filthy, primitive village where the weak and handicapped are condemned to death. However, her tremendous skill in weaving prevents her twisted leg from bringing her to the same fate, and she is soon set to work on restoring a colorful robe that documents human history. During this time, she discovers, among many other lies, that the village ruling council interns artists in order to create the future as they see fit through the creative processes. At the novel's climax, Kira's father, once thought to be dead, returns to meet his daughter for the first time, and explain that his failed assassin was in fact a Council elder. Yet despite his offer to help her escape to a village founded by the disabled and oppressed, she feels that it is her duty to defy the power-hungry in her midst by working with the other artisans toward creating their own vision of tomorrow.

While this summary may create the illusion that Gathering Blue is a fast-paced, hard-to-put-down mystery novel, the actual product is quite disappointing. The opening section of the novel, which extends roughly until Kira's life has been spared, is both intriguing and suspenseful, but after she receives her formal charge, the general level of excitement dips drastically. The majority of the novel appears to be nothing more than a series of cultural vignettes and independent episodes connected by a weak plot that is hardly apparent until the resolution of the work comes to pass. True, Kira possesses many "central goals" that keep the general flow of the novel from completely falling into a coma, such as her quests to unravel the mystery behind the existence of the beasts, to determine why she has been granted her unique post, to master the art of dyeing cloth, and to finally find her father, but so little attention is brought to these topics that the reader is misled to believe that minor, more obvious conflicts, such as the disappearance of one of Kira's friends, are the entities fueling the action of the novel. In fact, these are nothing more than ropes pulling the story toward the climax and resolution, where the ultimate plot is finally disclosed in a desirably clear manner. It is this use of a fairly covert storyline that brings unnecessary ruin to a literary work of such potential.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Review: Gathering Blue is a great book, full of suspense. It is about a girl named Kira, who lives in a village with her mom until she gets a sickness and dies. She leaves Kira, with her twisted leg, all by herself. A mean woman, Vandara, tries to get Kira kicked out of the village because in her opinion, Kira is useless. Kira gets saved by a man named Jamison, who Kira finds out later tried to kill her father, who she thought was killed by beasts.

I liked how there was another village that treated, in Matt's words, "broken" people, with respect. I also like how that village is the one with blue. I didn't like how Kira didn't go with her dad at the end, although I understand why, and she says that she will go to that village eventually.

I like how Kira, Thomas, and Matt make an adventure of their own and figure out the secret the Council of Guardians is hiding from the village. I also like how Kira is portrayed as a kind and gentle person, shown by the way she visited Jo.

Overall, I think this was a good book, with nice characters that you can follow as they change through the events in the story.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: "Gathering Blue," by Lois Lowry, is the companion book to "The Giver." I never read "The Giver" so I cannot compare the two. The setting of the book is in a futuristic, hunting-gathering village. It is written in 3rd person. The theme seems to be to fight for freedom for yourself and others.

It is about a girl named Kira. Kira is determined, brave, confident and independent. Beasts killed her father and her mother died of an unknown sickness. Her grandfather was part of The Council of Guardians. They are the controllers of the village and are considered very wise. After her mother died, Kira took care of herself. She protected her mother's corpse for 4 days in "The Field of Leaving," until she returned to the village wondering what was going to happen to her.

Kira was born with a twisted leg. The village usually took these kinds of babies to "The Field of Leaving" where they were eaten by beasts. The village people think that she is worthless because she can not weed, plant and tame the beasts but the Council of Guardians spared her life because she could weave exquisitely. Her job was to repair the robe, which was worn by the singer, and illustrated the history of the village. She had to sew a new history in the blank spaces. The job involved getting different color string but she could not find out how to make the coveted color blue.

She meets Matt, who unites her with her father, who she was told, was dead. While on her quest for blue dye, she uncovers secrets of the council and community. Did Kira finish the robe? What really happened to her mother? Sickness or murder? Read the book yourself to find out.

"Gathering Blue," In my opinion was not a great book, but it is surely not the worse. The ending left a lot of loose ends and did not answer all the questions that remained. Overall, the book makes us appreciate our lives and makes us realize all that we take for granted.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: almost great
Review: I found this book to be a quick read, easy to get through and actually quite interesting (as far as books required for school go). It had good characters, the plot unraveled well, and it made me want to turn to the next page. Personally all of those are definite plus' for the book itself. But there is one area of the book which I did find lacking...the ending! To me it really seemed not to have one, and so I found myself wondering about what might happen next? But anyways, before we get there, I should cover the beginning shouldn't I?
It starts off with a young girl mourning over her mother's death. Right away we can tell the differences between our two worlds as she is much more controlled than many of those in our society. When she returns to Town from "The Field" she is getting ready to rebuild her burnt home when she is informed that the village needs the area to cage their children and their chickens. Kira, who has a twisted leg, is useless to the town, which is why her plot of land was taken. After it is in fact taken away, she is brought to court about whether or not she should be allowed to stay in the village or be sent out to the field herself. thanks to the help of a guardian, she was allowed to stay, in the council edifice, in exchange for her mastery as a seamstress, they wanted her to fix the singers robe, a ceremonial robe worn once a year bye the singer, who sings the history of the world. this is where the plot gets complicated, and we find conspiracies lurking around every corner of the book, however I would so hate to give out the end of the story so I wont go that far, (not that I fully understood the end anyways).
I would say this book is more universal than the 9 - 12 age group given by Amazon. I am 15 and genuinely enjoyed reading the book, for the most part. It isn't a must read, but if you are into a different breed of futuristic sci-fi novels, this could just be the book for you. Even if you didn't fully enjoy the Giver, this book is still good, although I'm sure that having a full understanding of both will help you to link them together in a companionship where in one world technology has become life, and encompasses all, and in the other story, technology has destroyed all, and the world repeatedly needs to start anew. It is a thought provoking novel in itself and although I don't find it to have re-read quality, I admit that I still need to ponder through the end of the book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue
Review: When my 9th grade honors english teacher told us that we were required to read this book, being around the last 2 weeks of school, I sighed. To top it off, he then asked that we write a book review... Now I must admit, the first chapter was a real drag. I really was not looking forward to continuing. But having no other way out, I continued on. Then the story began to unfold. The plot thickened, and I found myself wrapped up in the book, unable to put it down. I read for three days straight over a long weekend, only stopping to eat, etc. (much to the dismay of my mother). I really enjoyed the book, completing it infact, before my teacher himself did. It's well written and easy to follow. Quite an easy read. I dont think that I would have choosen to read this book on my own, but considering the curcumstances, I'm very glad that I did. I would consider recomending this to readers of all ages, and reading levels. For those of a younger generation, its an inchanting story, with twists and turns, but with good characters to carry you along the way. For the older readers, it's a quick read, but still satisfactory. The only complaint that I have is I did not like the authors ending. It seems as though this was a book in a seris, and this being the first. It left me guessing and somewhat unsure, as if there was going to be a sequal. But for the most part I really enjoyed it, and will be looking for other new books by the same author.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Gathering Blue: The other part of "The Giver"
Review: "Gathering Blue" is a great novel that I would recommend to anyone who likes drama and an all around touching story. Also anyone who has read "The Giver" should include this novel on his or her reading list. Personally I thought that the book was great because it showed me that when one thinks they have lost all hope with life, that there is still a way to get through it all.
The main character is Kira, a parentless child who is fighting for her life. She has a deformed leg that makes her unable to do many things. One of the women in the tribe wants her to be taken to the Field to die, because she cannot do anything. She does, however have a special gift of threading and sewing that keeps her alive.
I give this book a five out of five star rating because it was a very touching story that taught me never to give up hope in times of despair. It is also a very interesting view of life in a tribe of people in which live without what society today would take for granted, the luxuries of things like running water in a building or a bathtub and a sink.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A quality work.
Review: I'm an adult reader, who wanted to know about this book in anticipation for my children reading it. Similarly, I had read the Giver, by the same author. Although, I preferred the tension of the Giver's story line, Gathering Blue had a lighter, but still mysterious quality. The books contrast nicely with each other. I especially think that the endings are worth a comparison for readers.

I wonder if the author gave different endings due to how she believed a male (the main character from the Giver) would react, as opposed to how a female (the main character of Gathering Blue) would react. I preferred the Giver's ending as more realistic and powerful, but I'm a male. Overall, the book is very readable, thought provoking, and entertaining. I highly recommend it for fifth graders, through adult age. There are no graphic scenes disturbing to a young child, but there are some scenes inferring harm to young children and their parents.


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