Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Newbery Award Year: 1994
Time: Sometime in the future
Place: In a conformist, utopian community
From start to finish, my older kids (ages 9 and 7) and I were mezmerized by this story. 11-year-old Jonas lives in a futuristic, dystopian society and is coming quickly toward the “Ceremony of Twelve,” where all 12-year-olds are assigned their future career and begin training for it. The community he lives in is completely controlled by the Elders, who make rules about everything from saying apologies to who can ride a bike to who you will marry.
At the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas is given an unbelieably rare assignment: the Receiver of Memory. Not even knowing what it means, he begins his training with the older and wiser “Giver,” who teaches Jonas about memories of how real life used to look — pain, joy, family, love, hunger, and everything in between. Both the Giver and Jonas sense that this conformist life cannot (or should not) endure forever, so they hatch a plan to begin distributing memory back into the community.
Our rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️