The final book of The Giver quartet is called Son. This book is broken into three parts, and ends up tying the quartet together. We begin with meeting Claire after she has been selected to be a birthmother. We see a new part of the community that Jonas grew up in. Giving birth is hard for her and it is decided that this is not the best job for Claire, and she is reassigned. But she wonders, what happened to her child? Nearly a year later, […]
Messenger
In continuation with The Giver quartet, the third book of the series is Messenger and follows Matt, who is now Matty from Gathering Blue. Also back in this book is Jonas, however he now goes by another name. Matty lives with Kira’s father, who is known in the community as the Seer, (ironic since he is blind). This village is made up of outcasts from other communities. They earn a name as they get older, they are given a new name, such as Mentor, or Seer. Matty is […]
Gathering Blue
As a middle school teacher, I’m always asking my students what they are reading, and this took me back to middle school. In their Language Arts class, they read the book The Giver and were very interested in it. On their own, many of them went of and borrowed the next book in The Giver quartet, Gathering Blue. I knew that since I enjoyed the book when I read it in middle school, I needed to read this book too. This is a different community than the community […]
Read all four, you’ll be glad you did.
The Giver was a recent selection for a book club I’m in, and so when I picked up my copy I figured I might as well get the ‘quartet’ edition that also has the other three books that follow: Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son. I don’t read a ton of YA fiction, so these were nice quick palate cleansers after The Devourers. 😉 THE GIVER (Book #1) The world that Jonas lives in is a carefully orchestrated and controlled society. Families are created in labs, […]
Son: A Beautiful End to a Beautiful Quartet
Having got a late start on The Giver, I decided to make up for lost time by reading the entire quartet. How beautifully wonderful it was! I don’t know what critics or readers think of it, but I thought it was the perfect ending to an original and piercing series. The story begins with a girl named Claire. A disappointing student, she is assigned the role of Birthmother. And then it all goes wrong. She feels things she cannot explain, things that no one else […]
Matty is now the Messenger
In happier news, I’m reading a different YA series that is well-plotted, well-characterized, and somehow…gentler…on the human spirit. I’d always heard of The Giver but never really knew about the sequence of novels that came later. I’m really glad to be reading them. Let’s talk about Messenger. Lowry weaves together plots from The Giver and Gathering Blue with the story of Matty, now a teenager and living in Village, a haven for broken/destitute/discarded people of outlying villages. Protected by Leader and mentored by Seer, a […]