1994 Newbery Medal Winner
By Lois Lowry
Houghton Mifflin
Boston, Massachusetts
1993
ISBN 0395645662
Ages: Young Adult
Lois Lowry did a wonderful job creating a whole new civilization in most every aspect. It was ordered, it was calm, it was logical, it was practical. Each person had their little compartments of knowledge, skills, duties, and correct behavior and responses, created by generations of conditioning. They had eradicated hunger, disease, suffering, crime, pain, loss, strife, and war. It was a perfect world... or was it?
As Jonas, the newly chosen Receiver, begins to receive things from the Giver, we, the readers also become receivers and privy to knowledge the rest of the population didn't have. But until we met the Giver, we didn't quite know what was missing-- it all sounded so happy and trouble free.
The story never mentions anything about time: dates, years, seasons (other than the time during a day or over a period of months), but one gathers it was in the far future because it mentions climate control, or animals that had long disappeared. The story never mentions where this was taking place, but those things weren't really necessary to tell the story. Lowry made the story more universal that way.
The author's thinking behind the story was very original, but it also reflected and forced us to think about some things we sometimes take for granted: free will, individuality, truth, respect of life, diversity. It casts a whole new light on the term melting pot.I see so many things in this story that can be springboards for discussion, too, but not before the story is simply read and enjoyed.