Having got a late start on The Giver, I decided to make up for lost time by reading the entire quartet. How beautifully wonderful it was! I don’t know what critics or readers think of it, but I thought it was the perfect ending to an original and piercing series. The story begins with a girl named Claire. A disappointing student, she is assigned the role of Birthmother. And then it all goes wrong. She feels things she cannot explain, things that no one else […]
Matty is now the Messenger
In happier news, I’m reading a different YA series that is well-plotted, well-characterized, and somehow…gentler…on the human spirit. I’d always heard of The Giver but never really knew about the sequence of novels that came later. I’m really glad to be reading them. Let’s talk about Messenger. Lowry weaves together plots from The Giver and Gathering Blue with the story of Matty, now a teenager and living in Village, a haven for broken/destitute/discarded people of outlying villages. Protected by Leader and mentored by Seer, a […]
The Gatherer, not the Hunter
I devoured The Giver last month and almost fainted when I heard that Lois Lowry wrote more books in the series. So of course it was off to my local library to put in a request because EVERYONE IS READING IT. I can see why–this book isn’t exactly a sequel, but it does provide some unusual counterpoint to the Stepfordian world Jonas inhabited in The Giver. Gathering Blue begins with Kira, who is mourning the sudden death of her mother. She is crippled with a […]
The Tragedies of Contentment
The Giver (1993) by Lois Lowry is by all accounts an excellent book. It won the Newbery Medal in 1994, and there are many reviews and comments on Cannonball dedicated to singing its praises. Now, I thought this was a good book, but something kept me from really feeling involved with the characters and the story. At first, I thought I’d been reading too many young-adult novels and was getting burned out (which was probably true), but I think there’s more to it. The Giver […]
3 down, 1 more to go in the series
This book is a more direct continuation of Gathering Blue. Matt, Kira’s friend from Gathering Blue lived in the ghetto of Kira’s Tribe. His parents were NOT nice. At the end of Gathering Blue, Matt had went with Kira’s father to live with him in The Village. The Village was founded by people who are not welcome in their own villages. Some travelled far and wide, some, like Kira’s father and Matt, came from just beyond the Forest. Now this Village, this is Utopian. Jonas, […]
CBR VI # 2 Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
I went into this book thinking that I would get an answer to the cliffhanger ending of The Giver. Was Jonas and Baby Gabriel safe? Or was it the final delusions of a dying kid? Well, I was sorely disappointed when the book opened to depict a society completely different from the Community. What was the connection? Well, I just decided to go ahead and enjoy the book on its merits and not as a sequel. Kira lives in a mainly hunter-gatherer society (with a […]