The Giver Quartet

I am of the opinion that not much useful information came out of NPR's list of the top 100 best young adult books, which was released this summer. For me, the fact that they excluded Ender's Game  from consideration because it is "too violent" is reason enough to think that the entire list must be crap. First of all, I don't think that Ender's Game is too violent for young adult readers, especially not those at the higher end of the age range they mention (12-18 years old). In fact, I believe that Ender is perhaps at his most powerful right in the middle of this range, for the 15- and 16-year-olds of this world, and I would recommend that book without reservation for any interested high school reader, and mature middle schoolers as well. Of course, the real absurdity is excluding Ender's Game for violence from a list that leaves behind The Hunger Games (and ranks it #2). But really, all this is another blog post. My central complaints are: (1) the list is a pure popularity contest (2) some of what I would consider the true classics of young adult literature were excluded from consideration (3) imagining that 12-18 year old kids represent a single reading population is frankly insane.

All that aside, I did get one piece of information that interested me out of the whole thing: Lois Lowry had returned to the world of The Giver for subsequent books. In fact, Lowry had returned to that world even more than the list gave her credit for, as the fourth and final book in The Giver Quartet was released just after the booklist came out.

Let there be no question that The Giver is one of the greats of children's/young adult literature. It is a beautiful, powerful story that is one of the only books that I can specifically remember the experience of reading as a child. (While I am not 100% sure, I believe that I read it shortly after it won the 1994 Newbury Medal, which would have made me about 12 at the time).

So I was curious, so I went back to The Giver and read on through the rest of the series over about a month this fall. What follows are my notes on this experience.

The Giver
By Lois Lowry
1993
Laurel Leaf
192 pages
ISBN: 0-440-23768-8
Cincinnati Public Library

I'll repeat myself, because this is important: The Giver is a giant among books targeted to a younger audience. Adults that have not read it should go get a copy and look forward to a wonderful afternoon. All parents should be anticipating to the compelling and challenging experience of reading it together with their middle-grade-ish child. Every serious child reader needs to spend some time with this one.

I was just such a serious child reader, and I remember reading The Giver  as a child because the premise made me deeply uncomfortable, and then the ending even more so. I remember really thinking about the larger implications of this book, the way that my world fit with the world that it was set in. I remember being uncomfortable in a way that I don't think I really had before. I remember thinking the ending could have been "better," which in my mind at the time most likely translated to "more explicit." I remember wondering for weeks and weeks "what happened" to Jonas and Gabriel. I remember adults telling me that I was free to imagine what had happened, and finding that unsatisfying.

We're talking about something that happened close to 20 years ago now, I've read probably thousands of books since I first picked this one up, yet I still think of The Giver as something that mattered in my development as a bookworm, as the first book with an adult-like impact on my thinking about the experience of being a reader. It's important to me.

And really, it has lost almost nothing over the years. I have revisited it several times, including as the topic for a philosophy paper my freshman year at Boston College. I have found the story lovely, moving, troubling, and powerful each and every time. This reading was no exception. Sure, the story seems a little short now, but overall, still something wonderful, truly exceptional. A tough, perhaps impossible act to follow.

Gathering Blue
By Lois Lowry
2000
Houghton Mifflin Company
215 pages
ISBN: 0-618-05581-9
Cincinnati Public Library

The "tough act to follow" nature of The Giver is perhaps why Lowry waited so long to do so. Gathering Blue, the second book in the series, appeared in 2000. That's seven years after The Giver, and well after I was no longer aware of the newest middle-grade books.

And it's fine, good even, but it's nothing compared to The Giver. The world is just weaker.

That being said, the characters are a particular strength. Kira rendered with a gentle touch, and Matty is a revelation and a delight. The story felt a little predictable for me, but I imagine it would be far less so for readers in the target age range. Even when I clearly saw some of the "twists" coming, I still found myself compelled to read on and learn what happened. In the end, I was moved by Kira's final choice.

The "sequelness" of this book is quite subtle. Indeed, looking at some young adult book review websites, the connection appears to be lost on many readers. I'm not sure that this is a bad thing.

Overall, I thought that Gathering Blue was entertaining, but The Giver is in an entirely different league.

Messenger
By Lois Lowry
2004
Houghton Mifflin Company
169 pages
ISBN: 0-618-40441-4
Cincinnati Public Library

I admit that I was delighted when I realized in the first few pages that Messenger focuses on Matty, by far the most enjoyable, well-crafted character from Gathering Blue. Unlike the connections between Gathering Blue  and The Giver  the connections between Gathering Blue and Messenger are clear from the first. The two middle books together represent a more classic series, you would miss a lot reading them out of order, and you gain something by reading them back to back. Here too, the connections to The Giver become overt.

Overall, I thought that Messenger was better than Gathering Blue: the world was more finely rendered and more foreboding. The nature of the conflict was more elegant and more challenging, and the plot was faster-paced and more compelling. I think that this is a better book for young readers than Gathering Blue and has some of the same elements that make The Giver such a powerful read for individuals in the target age group: the presence of significant and uncomfortable moral challenges, and an ending that, while far less ambiguous, will leave them wishing for something different.

Better, but still not as good as The Giver.

Son
By Lois Lowry
2012
Houghton Mifflin
393 pages
ISBN: 978-0-547-88720-3
Cincinnati Public Library

There is another long publication gap between Messenger and the final volume in the quartet, Son, which was published earlier this year. I wonder again if Lowry thought she might be done before deciding to return to the world for a final visit.

Son is significantly different in structure than the previous three books. It is split into three distinct sections. In the first, we return to the community of The Giver and see events occurring about the same time as Jonas's story, but through different eyes. These eyes belong to Claire, the birthmother who gave birth to Gabriel. Unlike other birthmothers in the community, who never see or know the children they carry, an unusual turn of events allow Claire to build an attachment to her son. This first section ends with the same events that lead to the conclusion of The Giver, and Claire also leaves the community in the chaos that accompanies Jonas's departure. This section was the strongest, and I enjoyed seeing some of the familiar events and characters from a different perspective. In the second section, we see Claire in her new community, a small, close-knit, and profoundly isolated seaside village, and watch as she trains and attempts the grueling journey out to find Gabriel and learn what happened to him. This section is lovely, especially watching Claire learn to live in the world outside the rigid boundaries and controlled environment of the community she knew.  In the third, and in my opinion, weakest section, we see the outcome of her search, and I am going to go into no more detail than that, for reasons I will explain below.


While I was excited to discover that there was more from the world of The Giver to read, I also had significant hesitance about the fact that these sequels existed. The ambiguity of the ending, the wondering about what happened to Jonas and Gabriel, was one of the most powerful and challenging components of my early experience of reading The Giver. I wasn't sure that I wanted "to really know what happened."

And in the end, I think that maybe I didn't. Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son are all fine, well-developed works of children's literature, and in another situation, I would be recommending them to kids as good, thought-provoking reads for late elementary and middle schoolers. But I don't recommend them, because The Giver is an impossible act to follow.

In fact, I think that The Giver is an act that shouldn't have been followed. Young readers may very much enjoy the opportunity to spend more time in this world. They almost certainly will find it satisfying to learn how things "turned out" for Jonas and Gabriel after they headed down that snowy hill on their little red sled. Yet, I think that they are losing something for having that answer spelled out for them. The Giver is as glorious, beautiful, and compelling as it is in no small part due to the ambiguous ending. Taking away that ambiguity and giving an answer in its place takes something away. I think detracts from the potential of the story as a important moment in the life of a young reader.

I make no claims that this opinion isn't entirely shaped by my strong memory of my experience of reading The Giver as a child. It is. That experience was valuable to me, and I think that it would have been less powerful and less important if I had just been able to read on and find the answers that I wanted. Even now, there is a part of me that wishes that I didn't have those answers, that I had left well enough alone.

So there it is. It's not often that I say this, but the advice that comes from my heart and my gut is that you avoid reading these books. Or at least that you avoid reading them until wondering what happens to Jonas and Gabriel no longer holds mystery and value for you. I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of awareness of these books that is mentioned in several of the child-written reviews that I read is part of a plot on the part of children's librarians to keep that mystery alive.

If you haven't read The Giver you should. If you have children, you should read it with them. And when you are done, under no circumstances should you mention that these sequels even exist. Leave them to ponder, leave them to wonder, leave them with the challenge and the catalyst of that delicious uncertainty. I believe it will help shape them as readers, and I think in time, make them love reading more. All these years later, I can say that it did that for me.