Award-winning juvenile fiction which discusses the weighty matters of choice, infanticide, and geriatricide in a way that ultimately leaves the reader to decide in an unbiased fashion. In a utopian culture of the future that maintains a base-line standard of life through self-suppresion and communistic assignment of duties and euthenasia of non-contributing members, young Jonas receives the very rare and enigmatic duty of Receiver. With this new role come rules of a very different nature than the rest of the culture. Ultimately this permits bypass of the emotional blindness and the revelation of the true nature and history of the culture.
Lois Lowryr
5 Stars
HIGHLY Recommended
The Giver has one of those “Radio Flyer” endings that leaves you wondering what really happened. This struck me as really unusual for a book of Newbury Award fame, reserved for juvenile fiction. Although written for a juvenile audience, the book really is adult in scope and thinking. Choice and consequence factor into this heavily, as Jonas experiences the regimental lifestyle of the culture only to discover later consequence inevitably follows choice, although the founders may have sought to separate the morality from the consequences.
Ultimately, The Giver is a lesson in dystopia: when someone’s vision of utopia reveals itself as broken for everyone made to bear it.
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