I should have read this for eighth grade, but shall we say complications arose and I did not. Most of my friends seem to have read it. I read Number the Stars by Lowry a year or two back and it was decent, but I prefer this. I saw Ms. Lowry at the bookstore once but did not meet her; she seemed nice, though.
So I listened to the audio book - four discs, narrated by Ron Rifkin. It's about a Utopian society which doesn't seem so bad until further along, but there's a lot of spoiler traps here. Let's just say the protagonist, Jonas, is selected to be the new Receiver, onto whom the Giver bestows memories. He finds out that the world has sort of stopped, that they are no longer moving forward due to fearful contentment. And that the authorities do awful things and lie about them to please people. (Personally I'd rather be upset and knowledgeable than ignorant and happy, dependably.)
I didn't agree with what Jonas does at the end (literally runs away - I'd have him rebel), so that's minus a star. I know there are some "companion" books, so maybe I'll look at them. They are Gathering Blue and Messenger, the latter of which I also have as an audio file. I did rather enjoy this book. Took me long enough.
Final grade: B
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