The Giver by Lois Lowry (4.5 stars)

From the foreword it's obvious that this is quite an extraordinary book. Here's just some of the things that people have said to Lowry about it in letters over the years:

One couple wrote to me about their autistic, selectively mute teenager, who had recently spoken to them for the first time—about The Giver, urging them to read it. A teacher from South Carolina wrote that the most disruptive, difficult student in her eighth grade class had called her at home on a no-school day and begged her to read him the next chapter over the phone...A Trappist monk wrote to me and said he considered the book a sacred text. A man who had, as an adult, fled the cult in which he had been raised, told me that his psychiatrist had recommended The Giver to him. Countless new parents have written to explain why their babies have been named Gabriel.

I didn't read it in school, but I could tell by the end that this must be an English curriculum book, and sure enough, it is. It's a fantastic and thought provoking Young-Adult read, but definitely for older kids, there's enough adult concepts in here to make some schools nervous enough to ban it.

Many reviews casually spoil some of the great reveals in the book. I want to mention some of them now, so stop reading if you don't want to be spoiled...

Lowry does a masterful job of easing us into this dystopian future. We see a safe and orderly society with a sinister undercurrent gradually become more and more disturbing as Jonas and the reader gain awareness of how it functions.

Despite it being expected for some time, the reveal of the infanticide is both shocking and disturbing. But the moment I was moved by most was a more unexpected plot reveal.  That is, when you realise that not only are these people denied choice of almost any form, but they are even denied colour. It's amazing how much emotion this revelation brings, and how it is delivered with a simple sentence:

You're beginning to see the color red.

This part was inspired by a painter that Lowry met that she says clearly had a much deeper ability to experience colour than she did. She wished that he could have somehow magically given her the ability to see colour in the same way. His picture is on the front of the book.

Some people complain about the ending, but those are always the same people who complain when everything isn't neatly tied up.

4.5 stars.