The Giver

In my world, the book is always better than the movie, so I was thrilled when 25 of my students chose to read The Giver last spring in advance of the movie release. Not one student abandoned the book--and my classes were on spoiler lockdown!  

In Jonas’s world, everything is…nice. Everyone is polite, everything is predictable, and there are no surprises. His society is engineered to cause little stress upon the people within it. There is no famine or drug abuse, just as there is neither Chopin nor cerulean blue. Upon turning into a Twelve (as all children who were born the same year will, on the same day, no matter their true age), Jonas and his friends will be given their adult assignment. While the others land predictably into vocations that suit them, Jonas is given a role for which no one could have prepared him—the Receiver.

                                                           

Lois Lowry presents a dystopia in which everything is pleasant, but not everything is as it seems. You will have an a-ha moment when you read about Jonas reporting dreams about a girl—“stirrings”—upon which he is given a pill to stifle them. It takes awhile to realize what is missing in Jonas’s world, but the revelations that push him to run are startling, and you will race with him to the somewhat uncertain conclusion.

Lowry, L. (1993). The giver. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.