The Giver

Rating:
Summary: It still Haunts me to This Very Day
Review: I've read my share of books day in and day out of my life but few stay with me like Lois Lowry's "The Giver." I first picked it up in fifth grade and never understood it leading me to buy a copy and re-reading it to see what I missed. Little did I know it turned out more haunting the more times I read it.

The title character Jonas goes through a rollarcoaster ride in this novel that even adults should read as well. Imagine living in a "negative society" like that of 1984, this book does just that again but everything is more controlled. Imagine having no pain, no true feelings, no love, and this books strips you clean and makes you proud of the world you live in today.

The ending is left unexplained like my weekly "X-Files" and left for the reader to decide what really happens.

The books is sad, I've read it at least 8 times now, and I'm 17 years old. This is how much this book has molded me into a greater person.

No doubt if you pick up this book it *will* change your life.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful read-aloud
Review: I've read The Giver a few times to Grade 4 students and they love it. While only a few kids that age could read it independently, it's one of those books that seems to lift students up to its level of sophistication and helps them mature by seeing our culture with a little removedness.

Set in the future, it gives a horrifying glimpse into "perfection". With everything safe and controlled, there's no tolerance or allowance for error, for real feelings, for true thought. It's a very colourless place! In fact, people have lost their ability to see colour -- all except for a few. Jonas is one of them, although at first he catches only brief glimpses and doesn't know what it is, just that for a moment something looks "different". This is one of the very powerful, sublte threads of the plot, the discovery that this different look to things is actually colour. The reader doesn't know for a very long time that this perfect world is in fact colourless, and when it finally is revealed, my students are always shocked! (sorry if I'm giving away some plot, but if you're a teacher and haven't read this book, it's good to know to add some intrigue about this, as it is very subtle).

One of the most wonderful aspects about this book is that it makes us so very thankful for the world we have, with all its imperfections. A perfectly safe world is not so appealing afterall! It's certainly not without a very dark, secret underbelly. What is "Releasing?" A discovery more shocking than no colour! And this plot thread I won't give away!

A good "while reading" technique is to make a Venn diagram to compare "The Future Community" to "Our Community", noting the similarities and differences. It makes a good, thoughtful focuser for the students.

The ambiguous ending, I've found, leaves kids quite dissatisfied. Many of them feel cheated. Personally, I think this is wonderful, for it may be their first novel to not have all the loose ends neatly tied. Lowry leaves room for their own interpretation. What I like to do is not read the final chapter until after the kids have written their own endings. This way they can better deal with the amibiguity at the end, because they've thought it through to their own satisfaction already.

I'd highly recommend this book if you love good, thought-provoking literature. Lowry shows true genius, and stimulates very high-level thinking.

Rating:
Summary: Seemingly a Utopia
Review: I've read The Giver three times in my life. Once on my own in 6th grade and I didn't get to finish it; I still regret that to this day. Then I read it in reading class in eight grade. I was so amazed. It stunned me how it was so well written. Lois Lowry's imagination is outstanding. It felt as if I was right in the book with Jonas. I just finished it for the third time this year in my tenth grade English class, and still the book gets better every time I read it. It's about a twelve-year-old boy named Jonas, who lives in a real but yet far from reality world, where there is no crime, pain, or wrongdoing of any kind. The elders of Jonas's community assign he and his fellow Twelve's to their life occupation. You'll find out that Jonas is special and so he gets a job that only one person gets. He's chosen to be the receiver of memories in from the Giver. Jonas begins to find out things in his community that no one else except he and the Giver know about. The thing I like the most about the book is that Jonas's world has a controlled environment and they have a pill for everything like pain and feelings.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and Threatening
Review: I've read The Giver twice, once as a confused fifth grade student and recently as part of an online class assignment as a high school Junior. This book never fails to entertain my senses and keep me clutching on to its paperback until I finish the very last page. It's an amazingly artful weaving of words that keeps the attention of all its readers, young and old. It's intriguing to try to fathom a world in which there is no yesterday. This is a world where social classing is non existent. Each and every individual of this community has the same house, the same size family, the same hair style and clothing. If that is not challenging enough, imagine a life built on ignorance rather than past experience and knowledge. A life without memory, without pain, without feeling whatsoever. The story centers on Jonas, on the brink of turning twelve at the beginning of the novel, in a utopian society. Jonas is chosen to be the new Receiver of Memory for the colony. Jonas, and those Receivers before him, stores the collective memories of those things which their society has managed to forget over the time they've been apart from the rest of the world. Jonas's then can see his world as it really is. This is definitely a thought provoking tale and full of twists and turns. Highly recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Great Book!
Review: I've read this book about 4 times and I find something new in it each time. I will say that it is a very different book, with some VERY unique perspectives, but it really makes you think about our world, and how we live. I first read this in Grade 4 and I understood most of it. I would say that it is for anyone over Grade 4, but you do have to be mature. There are some strong themes in the novel. Pick it up and think while you read. Compare our world to theirs. I think you'll like it! I know I did!

Rating:
Summary: Top Rank Book!!!
Review: I've read this book about 7 times. Everytime you read it you think of what it would be like to live in a land where you can't make your own decisions, choose your own job, and voice your thoughts. Jonas, a pre-teen, discovers himself when faced with a serious decision on what to do with a small child, Gabriel. He learns about the past, and the future and finds his own being. This is a must read!!! This book opens up your imagination and pulls your heart out onto the pages everytime you read it. 5 STARS FOR "THE GIVER"!!!

Rating:
Summary: Interesting idea makes a great book
Review: I've read this book several times, and I've enjoyed it each time. The ending has always seemed a bit contrived to me, as if Lowry was up against a deadline and needed to end the story.

Just the same, the idea of a society in which all choices were outlawed and they needed a single person to carry all their memories and their history is intriguing. It's a book to make us appreciate the society we live in, knowing that even if we do often make the wrong choices, at least we have the ability to make those choices.

Rating:
Summary: A below average exploration on human nature/dystopias
Review: I've read this book twice now, about three years apart. I didn't care for it then, and I don't care for it now. Although a somewhat interesting general plot, I never felt the urge to "find out what happened next." I don't know why this book is hailed as one of the greatest books ever written, a modern classic. The characters seemed dull and one-dimesional. The plot, although unique in some ways, just seemed mashed together from several different stories written before. I do understand this is a children's book, though I do not see what everybody sees in this below average exploration in dystopias and human nature.

For books about dystopias and human nature, I suggest reading more interesting novels such as 1984, Brave New World, A Clockwork Orange, the Dune Chronicles, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Bonfire of the Vanities, Mother Night, etc. For some good short stories, read Harrison Bergeron, Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, The Veldt, and others.

Rating - 2 stars - You can pass this one up.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't make any sense!!!
Review: I've read this book, and I didn't get one thing out of it. It is such a ridiculous idea that a world and its inhabitants do not have any feelings or memories. What a croc.

Rating:
Summary: Utopia vs. Reality
Review: If anyone ever needed proof that the society we live in is not as bad as it seems they should read The Giver. The problems we have to deal with such as crime, starvation, and war are insignificant to the problems that face the utopian society of The Giver. In this so-called perfect society everyone is the same they all have the same homes and the same amount of belongings but, they don't have memories and they all do what the leaders of their society tell them to. The people within in this community act like robots they do what they are told and they never question why things are they way they are. How could anyone exist without the basic human rights that we take for granted? It is so true that you don't know what you have until it's gone because after reading The Giver I came to realize all that I do have that I take for granted. For example, can you imagine a life without color or going through your life without a memory? I know that our society does have some serious problems but, The Giver shows you that things could definitely be a lot worse.