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Loading... Gathering Blue (2000)by Lois Lowry
This book offers students a look into a very different world than their own. I personally feel the world is more similar to that found in The Hunger Games than that of The Giver. ( )I found it very easy to rate this and The Giver four stars and may eventually come back and give them the fifth. I'm finding it harder to make a comment on either one. Ms. Lowry paints very good pictures with her stories. There's a very interesting combination of simplicity and complexity. I found the same thing to be true in Number The Stars. I feel like I want to read The Messenger and then right a whole essay on these. They really have affected me and will stick in my mind. I really liked this book. I thought it was a very interesting way to open up children to the dystopian and/or sci-fi genre of literature. As always, Lowry's attention to detail in terms of plot and characters is amazing! It kept me hooked! So, not much happened in Gathering Blue. I was really hoping that there would be more to the world in the book. It was a very primitive dystopia; there really wasn't much oppressive authority; it was just a crappy world full of crappy people. The ending was somewhat disappointing; nice and somewhat positive, I guess, but I was hoping for some huge unveiling of why their world was the way it was. That's what makes a good book for me. Not to be found here; maybe it will be in the next book. I'm giving this three stars because my interest was held for most of it, and there were some loveable characters. I haven't read The Giver for years, so I remember almost nothing of it. It seemed like this had absolutely nothing to do with that book. First I was disappointed when I learned the main character of book 1 The Giver would not be in this book but after a few days I decided to give this book a try. So glad i did cause I did enjoy it. A very different post apocalyptic world than the one we were shown in The Giver.This world is worse then the world we know but I did find it interesting and I liked the characters, especially Matt so I was delighted to learn that Matt is in book 3 which I have just started now. I really like the way Lois Lowry writes. She has a way that really draws me in.
''The Giver'' was an unforgettable, one-of-a-kind book that spoke as much to adults, myself included, as to children. The future world it depicted was rich and seductive and -- frightening thought -- completely plausible. The brute, survivalist world of ''Gathering Blue'' is much less convincing, with neither the dimension nor the subtlety of ''The Giver.'' Many of the characters in ''Gathering Blue'' are presented as either good or bad, and lack the complexity of real people.
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0385732562, Paperback)Lois Lowry's magnificent novel of the distant future, The Giver, is set in a highly technical and emotionally repressed society. This eagerly awaited companion volume, by contrast, takes place in a village with only the most rudimentary technology, where anger, greed, envy, and casual cruelty make ordinary people's lives short and brutish. This society, like the one portrayed in The Giver, is controlled by merciless authorities with their own complex agendas and secrets. And at the center of both stories there is a young person who is given the responsibility of preserving the memory of the culture--and who finds the vision to transform it.Kira, newly orphaned and lame from birth, is taken from the turmoil of the village to live in the grand Council Edifice because of her skill at embroidery. There she is given the task of restoring the historical pictures sewn on the robe worn at the annual Ruin Song Gathering, a solemn day-long performance of the story of their world's past. Down the hall lives Thomas the Carver, a young boy who works on the intricate symbols carved on the Singer's staff, and a tiny girl who is being trained as the next Singer. Over the three artists hovers the menace of authority, seemingly kind but suffocating to their creativity, and the dark secret at the heart of the Ruin Song. With the help of a cheerful waif called Matt and his little dog, Kira at last finds the way to the plant that will allow her to create the missing color--blue--and, symbolically, to find the courage to shape the future by following her art wherever it may lead. With astonishing originality, Lowry has again created a vivid and unforgettable setting for this thrilling story that raises profound questions about the mystery of art, the importance of memory, and the centrality of love. (Ages 10 and older) --Patty Campbell (retrieved from Amazon Tue, 14 Sep 2010 13:48:00 -0400) Lame and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed from her squalid village to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians. |
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