The Giver (The Giver, #1) in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

May 01, 2011 Jessica rated it liked it

Shelves: young-adult-and-kids

I feel a little bad for not liking The Giver. My main problem with it is that it feels like one of those books you have to read in sixth-grade English class because the teachers think the book has great things to say, but the students themselves just complain about it behind the teachers' backs. It feels like what adults think a children's book should be.

The Giver presents a utopian society where everything that creates difference (seasons, colors, birthdays...) has been banished. The main chara ...more

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Apr 18, 2012 Meredith rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

How have I never read this book? SOOOOOOOOO good.

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Jul 01, 2008 Talia rated it it was amazing

Shelves: j-fiction, newberry, j-sci-fi

Jonas has just gotten his career assignment at his community's annual ceremony. He is to be his society's new "keeper of memory". Under the guidance of "The Giver", the community's current keeper of memory, Jonas slowly learns that his utopian society with no poverty, no crime, no war, is not all it's cracked up to be with no love, no color, no feeling.

6/2008
I. Loved. This. Book. The story transported me to another world and really forced me to use my imagination in visualizing Jonas's futuristi ...more

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Mar 26, 2008 Rae rated it liked it

Shelves: ya-childrens

Lowry creates a society where no one sees color or has feelings. Families are limited and created by a committee. Religion seems to be non-existent. Rules are the rage and no one really makes any actual choices. Only one man, the Receiver, has memories of the "old" and different world. He is soon to be Old, when he will be released (a euphemism for euthanized), and must pass on (or give) his memories to an heir.

Parents almost universally protest their children reading this in school. I think it' ...more

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Jul 07, 2012 Cheryl rated it it was amazing

Shelves: book-group, top-10, juvenile-fiction, newbery-award, books-with-eleanor, reading-again, homeschooling

Third time rereading I believe. This time with Eleanor at age 12. I have waited so long to read this with one of my kids. She loved it. After just the first chapter, she said she could tell this was going to be the best book she read this year 🙌🏻 I loved it as much as the first and second times I’ve read it. Funny I never thought about the ambiguous ending being ambiguous until a friend mentioned that the other day.

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