I was supposed to read this book a few years ago for my book club.  However, once I realized that I wouldn’t be able to make the meeting that month, I decided not to read the book.  That, however, caught up with me when it was assigned for my Children’s Literature class.  I had kind of decided not to review what I read for class, just because I’d be writing about it there.  This book, though, is an exception.

Let me start with an observation, not on the book but about reading the book.  I feel old.  In class, there was a chorus of “I read this in 6th Grade!  I read this in 5th Grade!  In read this in utero!” (Okay, I made up that last one).  I look at the publication date of this book and it was 1993.  You know where I was in 1993?  COLLEGE!  Yes, I’m old…at least in that class.

So, the premise of the book is that a “utopian” (you have to put that in quotes because utopian societies are never utopian!) where emotion and choice are completely eliminated.  You come across weird things like couples are assigned to each other.  They can have 2 children, a boy and a girl, but these two are also assigned.  When they turn 12, they are assigned a vocation (and to answer a question I know is being asked by those who haven’t read it, “birth mother” is a job and there are women who give birth once a year for three years before being put into manual labor jobs.  And, to ask a question that I was told I would probably not want to ask 6th graders, who are the fathers?). 

There is one person in the community, the Memory Keeper, who has a record of all the memories “from before.”  Jonas, at his 12 year ceremony, is assigned to be the new Memory Keeper and starts an apprenticeship with the current Memory Keeper, who Jonas calls “The Giver.”

Would I consider this a great book?  Definitely–in the way that I consider Schindler’s List to be a great movie.  It must be read, but you probably aren’t going to enjoy most of it and it will haunt you afterwards.  It is wonderfully written and Lowry paces the story effectively so that the reader is sucked in.  But, as I said, it will stick with you.  It may not be pleasant, but it will cause you to stop and take stock of the liberties that you have.

And, by the way, I wouldn’t consider this Children’s Literature.  It’s written at a level that upper elementary students or young adults would read, but the subject matter is definitely meant for more mature (not necessarily “older”) readers.