Lois, Lowry. The Giver. New York: Dell Laurel-Leaf, 1993.
Annotation:
Being the next receiver is an important role in which 12 year old Jonas must learn. It is a huge responsibility to keep the memories of true pain and pleasure in a community where law breaking receives sever punishment, where families share their dreams after breakfast and their feelings after dinner, and where everything is structured and under complete control. Through Jonas's journey of coming of age in his community, he begins to see the world as it truly is.
Justification for Nomination
Lois Lowry is a wonderful author who has a creativity that no one can match. I remember how happy I was when I first read The Giver in junior high. The plot is amazing and entertaining. I like that the community has no conflict and little emotion, but then main character Jonas trains to be The Giver (the receiver) and the conflict in the plot comes to life. Although The Giver has themes that focus on science fiction and fantasy, Jonas and the current receiver have such realistic feelings and curiosity. It is wonderful that Lowry can create two characters who have to hold every single emotion and memory of everybody in the community, while the community continues to be unaware of how the world really is. Jonas and the current receiver are humans among robots. Lowry gives us a world in which free choice is taken away and people aren't allowed to truly live their lives, but in reality some countries are going through this same problem. The Giver teaches its readers that not everyone gets freedom and that freedom is a gift not to be taken for granted. Many people may say that some of the characters in The Giver lack emotion. While this is true, Lowry gives her characters emotion through descriptive words that don't quite say what the emotion is, but allows us to figure it out on our own. For example, in the beginning when the family is sharing feelings and Jonas's sister Lily makes a fist, she is showing anger. Another example is when their father talks about his job as nurturer, he talks about his feelings of sadness for a baby he works with that might get "released" because he isn't growing, but their father doesn't say "I'm sad." I think that would be to boring. Jonas's ignorance about how the world truly is adds a wonderful and exciting coming of age theme to The Giver. He doesn't know what released means which shows readers that he is as unknowing about how backwards his community is and what the world is like outside of his community as much as the other children, but then he is thrown into a role where he finds out that everything isn't as perfect as it seems. A great twist to the plot, is that many of the adults in the community don't know whats going on either. Lowry's take on the family unit is far beyond creative. Her mind created a world where a man and a women are chosen to be together and a family can only have one boy and one girl. Although love is taken out of the making of a family (their choosing of a husband or wife), they learn to love each other because that's the way it is. She really knows how to take reality and twist it around to make something totally different and surprising. Lowry is again being creative by separating the groups of twelves into roles that they will have in the community. Some friends will have different roles and won't be able to see each other, but they don't care. These children are immediately thrust into this adult world with their childhood completely taken away from them and their totally oblivious to it. Reading Lowry's words is like being in a totally different world. I liked how she used her words to describe objects that we would use in reality. For example, calling a stuffed animal a "comfort object," "stirrings" instead of hormones, or saying "released" instead of a more negative word such as killed or death. Lois Lowry has a brilliance and a very creative imagination that can only be shown by the magical world that she creates in her books. This was my justification for the remarkable novel The Giver.
Genre Category: Nomination, Science Fiction, Fantasy
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