Saturday 14 October 2017

The Giver by Lois Lowry

As I've said on here before, choosing which books to read next is one of the little daily pleasures that make my life better.  I particularly love it when I find a brilliant book which I've overlooked for years (decades in this case) that comes, like a gift, from an unexpected source.

Over the summer I read a quarter of a book called Making Every English Lesson Count: Six principles for supporting great reading and writing.  I was so bored by the end of the second principle, that I decided that someone who had bored me so rigid, that I was looking around for extra dusting to do to avoid reading his words, probably didn't have an awful lot to teach me about getting other people to write well.  However, the book did reference another called Reading Reconsidered by Doug Lemov, which sounded good and useful, and was.  It's written for American teachers, but the principles are absolutely pertinent to the English classroom too.  I have learned a great deal from it, and the children in my classroom are benefitting already.  There were many references in the book to The Giver by Lois Lowry, which I had never read, but the more I read about the exercises related to it, the more I wanted to read it.

Published in 1993, it's an accessible dystopian novel, disturbing but not violent, utterly thought-provoking.  Suitable for age 10+, it's the story of Jonas, who discovers that his perfect community, is masking horrific secrets, and has brainwashed participants to commit inhuman acts.

Apparently it's the first of many set in the world, although I haven't got round to reading any of the others yet - and it didn't feel anything other than a complete book in itself. Highly recommended.  The boring six principles book, not so much...

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