FeedTimeless Thursday: The Giver by Lois Lowry
January 14, 2010 in Collins, Suzanne, Lowry Lois, Middle School Teachers, Timeless Thursdays, Young Adult Novels Tags: Catching Fire, Lois Lowry, Newberry Medal, Suzanne Collins, The Giver, The Hunger Games, Timeless Thursday
Whenever I read books like The Giver, I am fascinated with the way the author has created this amazing future world that is so incredibly screwed up. I am a big fan of The Hunger Games series which I’ve wrote about a couple times on this blog. When reading Suzanne Collins’s series, I an so reminded of The Giver. I don’t know if anyone else has ever been reminded of Lois Lowry’s book when reading The Hunger Games series. I love both, and so I had to remind everyone about The Giver today on Timeless Thursday!
In The Giver’s world, a twelve-year-old (can you imagine?) receives their life assignment at the annual Ceremony in December. Jonas is scared and wondering what type of Assignment he’ll receive from the Elders. Nobody wants to be a Sanitation Laborer for the rest of their lives. So, when Jonas is given a very special assignment when he’s twelve–he has been selected to be the next Receiver of Memory. He has to spend time with the Giver. It’s a very special honor, but he’s scared and wondering what in the world is in store for him, especially when he starts to learn the truth about the “perfection” in his world.
Although this book isn’t as old as some of my other Timeless Thursday selections (copyright 1993), it’s still extremely popular today and studied in many middle school or junior high classrooms. I also think it’s still going to be around for many, many more years because the plot can be discussed at length, the characters analyzed, and personal connections made with both when readers put themselves in Jonas’s world and ask, “What if this was me? What if I lived in this world? What would I do? What would I believe?”
If your children or students have read The Hunger Games or Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins, you could also do a compare/contrast activity with The Giver by Lois Lowry. Students might also be inspired to write their own stories set in a future world where people think they have gotten life right and better, but they haven’t. Heck, I even have a rough draft or two of a beginning of a novel about that very topic!
One last thing. . .The Giver won the Newberry Medal in 1993.
January 14th, 2010 at 9:14 pm
I love the idea of “Timeless Thursday.” There are so many great new books, but there are also so many older books to keep in mind. And when you can pair them together like this, it benefits both books. I admit that I didn’t think of The Giver when I read The Hunger Games/Catching Fire, but I came to The Giver later in life…I read it in a University English course.
January 15th, 2010 at 10:47 am
Thanks, Caroline. Timeless Thursday is fun for me!
January 16th, 2010 at 6:26 am
I adore this book. I read it over again every now and then. It really was the prelude to many of the current YA dystopian books. :O)
January 16th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I agree that, while it’s not old at all, this is one of those truly timeless books. (Timeless Thursday is a great idea, by the way.) I really ought to reread it one of these days.
January 16th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I completely agree!
January 16th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Thanks, Melissa!
I was looking for a word that started with T. . . and then I came up with Timeless Thursday. HA! 
January 17th, 2010 at 8:37 am
Hm. I wouldn’t think The Hunger Games would be the most apt comparison here – Hunger Games is so violent and such an obvious dystopia, whereas Jonas isn’t all that bothered by his life at first (if I’m remembering correctly, anyway). I just read The Unnameables and that reminded me a lot of The Giver – isolated community, jobs assigned during a special ceremony (though most children have something of a choice – they’ll often request to take on the same job their parents have), and banishment for anyone who doesn’t fit in.
January 17th, 2010 at 10:23 am
That’s true, Angela. I guess it’s just the future world controlled by others that actually, obviously do not have everyone’s best interest at heart that made me think of THE GIVER while reading THE HUNGER GAMES. Katniss and Peeta do realize what is going on and how it is horrible, which is completely different from Jonas. I haven’t read the UNNAMEABLES, but I’ll have to check it out. I think there’s a Margaret Peterson Haddix book too–RUNNING OUT OF TIME– about a girl who is actually living in a community like she is in the 1800s, but really it’s a tourist site and scientists are experimenting on them. The secrecy and cover-up by the powers in charge are common themes in all of these books, IMHO.
Thanks for leaving your comment.
Margo