Chapter II: The Giver - Or I'm so lame I steal from myself

          I'm stealing from myself. Is that hip or lame? Anyway, we're on such a YA kick that I wanted to share my thoughts about a set that did make the top 100 - The Giver and its companion books. I originally posted this on the YA blog for my library (links to the side!).

          Many young adults have been assigned the iconic novel The Giver by Lois Lowry in some grade or another. I remember my first assignment to read it back in the third grade for a gifted class. I was required to read it again in the fifth grade, and once more in the sixth, and then in my college days, I was asked in my third year while taking a creative writing class for children and young adults. But school wasn't the only time I would read this remarkable classic - after my first introduction to the novel, I read it at least once a year. Every year I would discover something a little different, and as I grew up, the book grew up with me.
          If you haven't read the book since you had to for class, give it another go. The themes are poignant and timeless and some things will have evolved in your mind - exactly what the Stirrings mean, how many different variations of love you can find in your life, the fierce impulses to protect a young life. This is a novel that can grow with its reader, and no one is too old to rediscover something beautiful about it.
            And the story doesn't end with The Giver. Many don't realize it is part of a series - once a trilogy, now an impending quartet. The second book, Gathering Blue, is a tale in a dystopian society that doesn't have the outward glamor of a utopia like the communities of The Giver. It is a society that in the face of the nameless horrors that plagued the world before chose to regress into a setting that feels like it is set in a quasi-Renaissance village. Most villagers don't know about running water or electricity. Young protagonist Kira is taken from this rough life in the village to a life of comfort within the village center. There she learns of the horrors of society before her simplistic village - bombs, fires, destruction. Like Jonas, her eyes are opened to both the wonders and the terrors of the world before - our world. While Jonas never makes an actual appearance in the novel, he is mentioned by a description that is unmistakable to any who have read The Giver.
          Following Gathering Blue is the novel Messenger. This novel ties the previous two together, whereas Gathering Blue had been a companion to the first. The main protagonist is Matty, a boy introduced in the prior novel. Kira and Jonas play supportive roles in this novel. Much more straightforward about its themes (namely materialism and how it corrupts), it reads for a much younger crowd than the other two novels. That said, Lowry's prose retains all of its magical qualities, transporting the reader to this strange village that bridges the gap between The Giver and Gathering Blue. The protagonist is not initially the same sort of quiet thinker as Jonas and Kira, but Matty finds himself more and more reflective as the novel progresses, and we learn as much from him as from his predecessors.
           I mentioned that the series is now becoming a quartet. Lois Lowry has written a fourth book to the series, Son, which will be released October 2. A more direct sequel to The Giver, set in the same place, it ties together the previous three novels. The released summary holds grand promises, and as I must wait until October 2 along with so many others, all I can do is quote it (found on both Amazon and B&N's webpages) with great excitement.

Told in three separate story lines, Lois Lowry’s Son combines elements from the first three novels in her Giver Quartet—The Giver (1994 Newbery Medal winner), Gathering Blue, and Messenger—into a breathtaking, thought-provoking narrative that wrestles with ideas of human freedom. Thrust again into the dark, claustrophobic world of The Giver, readers will meet an intriguing new heroine, fourteen-year-old Claire. Jonas from The Giver is here too, and Kira, the heroine of Gathering Blue. In a final clash between good and evil, a new hero emerges.

          I hope that if you have not had the chance to read the series that follows The Giver, you will give the rest of Lowry's world a chance. It may be dark, but the hopeful lights of the characters will give you cause to reflect on values you may have otherwise taken for granted, such as choice, acceptance, and compassion.