The Giver, B1

Name: Aaron Brown
Period: B1
Book Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Pages: 180
Rating: **

Recommendation: I’d say this book is really wacky, but has some really important points to learn. If you like the sense of a really thought out science fiction then you’ll love this book. It’s an easy book to read. If you like easy books to read this is the book for you! This is a very clever book…. It had me thinking about the logic of what they are saying or of what is going on.

Summary: A confused hidden community where the leaders take all possible steps to eliminate pain and confusion. This society is clueless of the “real” world, thinking that they are the only ones, and the creators of the community want to keep it that way. Each 12 year old human is assigned a job according to their skills, and personality for a future wives/husbands. There are no technologies, other than speaker phones to talk throughout the community. Most people ride bikes or walk.

It becomes clear that the society has lost contact with the ideas of family and love. Each family unit can only have 2 children in the family Unit., A boy and a girl. Jonas (the main character) turns of the age of 12. He is eager to know what his job was going to be. Jonas lives in a standard family unit with his mother a judge, his father a Nurturer and his seven later becomes eight year old sister. He is selected to be Receiver of Memory as in (The Giver). Their can only be one Giver at a period of time. They receive messages threw memories; this is where he is able to feel sadness, happiness, violence, and love. Jonas try’s to escape the community to try to get out the other “world’s” so that his community can know of what is happening.

Explanation of Rating: This book gets really slow at parts. It was hard for me to keep reading because nothing was really happening… (in some parts of the book). I liked the fact that in the book, the author was putting in concepts that were meaningful, but not to hard to understand. I also liked the plot of the whole story. It was very well thought out. I simply thought this was an “Okay book” because it was too slow at times, and was easy to read.

Favorite passage: "Our people made that choice, the choice to go to Sameness. Before my time, before the previous time, back and back and back. We relinquished color when we relinquished sunshine and did away with difference. We gained control of many things. But we had to let go of others." -Chapter 12

I like this passage because, in life you always are wanting to gain or get something better, but in order to gain them you have to let go to other things.