The Giver by Lois Lowry

1994 Newbery Winner
Finished 12-14-06

Jonas lives in a world as near to perfect as it can be made. Every citizen of his community respects every other citizen. Each person has his or her place. The community runs like a well-oiled machine. Jonas is perfectly happy with this—until. Until he meets the Giver. Suddenly Jonas’s wonderful perception of his community begins to rust away, flake by flake.

When I started out reading the Newbery Award and Honor books, I was basically rereading. I didn’t want to spend a whole lot of time going “Well, I read this about five years ago. Should I count that as having read it for this project?” So I just decided to reread everything. We had quite a few Newbery books laying around the house, so I gathered them into a pile, and using the highly scientific method of eeny-meeny-miny-moe, began reading. None of the books were really new or exciting to me.

The Giver was one of the first Newbery books that I borrowed from the library, one that I hadn’t read yet. I think I’d kind of heard of it. But really, I wandered into it unawares, and came out grinning like some kind of overly happy clown. Looking back in my Newbery notebook, I see that I babbled somewhat incoherently about how great it was after I was finished.

What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said by dozens of other reviewers? I can tell you why I think it clicked for me. It was the mixture of depth and accessibility. When I think of a “serious” book, words like “slow-moving” and “dull” come to mind. That’s probably a wrong assumption—but that’s a topic for another post. What I liked about The Giver was that it actually moved. Yet it also made me use my brain, and challenged ideas I had taken for granted.

If you haven’t read the book, you may not want to read this paragraph of the review. I want to give my opinion on the ending. A lot of people seem to dislike it because of its ambiguity. Me? I don't mind not knowing what happened to Jonas. It's obvious to me that he is going to be fine. I want to know what happened to the people he left behind. What about Asher and Fiona? And Jonas’s family? Do they change for the better? Those were the questions I wanted badly to be answered.

If I had a top-ten list of Newbery books, this would make the cut. Is that recommendation enough?