The Giver by Lois Lowry

I read this book when I was in 5th or 6th grade and remember it being one of my favorites. It is very abstract and makes the reader think about how other people in the world may live their lives differently. When I first started reading this book for the second time, my initial thoughts are these people live in a cult like community or a communist community where there are no "real" choices, feelings or pain that people have to experience. One of the most important messages I got from reading this book was that life consists of so many good memories, pain, and love. If we take away all these bad things so that people can live a somewhat "content" life, then the community also has to take away all the good things that life consists of. There are many instances in the text that allows you to think about your own life and your own community and compare to how this community lives their life. What really bothered me was the lack of choice that these humans have in their community. They are raised this way, so they don't know the difference. It is difficult for me to fathom the idea of being born into a community like North Korea where you have limited human rights and cannot even leave the country. This book would be an awesome book to bring into the classroom and talk about community and our world. I really enjoyed reading this book because it got my mind thinking about how lucky we are to live in a world with choice, and there are so many beautiful things to appreciate. Some of the things Jonas experiences in the book are so normal to me like color, and animals, seasons, the sun, etc that I take them for granted. It really bugged Jonas and it would bug me too if I was the only person in the community that could see and feel and experience life in that way. Some people may argue that there is something good about living this kind of simplistic life, but in my mind it would be so boring.....I would feel like a robot! Or maybe I wouldn't know any different?