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The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, Son
Lois Lowry
THE GIVER is soon to be a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes and Taylor Swift.Now available for the first time in the UK, THE GIVER QUARTET is the complete four-novel collection.THE GIVER: It is the future. There is no war, no hunger, no pain. No one in the community wants for anything. Everything needed is provided. And at twelve years old, each member of the community has their profession carefully chosen for them by the Committee of Elders.Jonas has never thought there was anything wrong with his world. But from the moment he is selected as the Receiver of Memory, Jonas discovers that their community is not as perfect as it seems…GATHERING BLUE is a return to the mysterious but plausible future world of THE GIVER. It tells the story of Kira, orphaned, physically flawed, and left with an uncertain future until she is summoned by the Council of Guardians. On her quest for truth that follows, Kira makes discoveries that will change her life and world forever.In MESSENGER, Matty has lived in Village and flourished under the guidance of Seer, a blind man known for his special sight. His community once welcomed newcomers, but something sinister has seeped into Village and the people have voted to close its borders to outsiders. Now Matty must risk everything to make one last journey through the treacherous forest…SON is the thrilling conclusion to THE GIVER QUARTET. When ‘Water Claire’ washed up on their shore, no one knew that she came from a society where emotions don’t exist. That she had become a Vessel. That she had carried a Product. That it had been stolen from her body.Claire’s son is out there, a young boy now. And she will stop at nothing to find her child, even if it means making an unimaginable sacrifice.Award-winning author Lois Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, how people could evolve and what could be considered valuable in this fascinating quartet of dystopian novels – now available as a four-book set.
The Giver Quartet: The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger and Son
Lois Lowry
Copyright (#ulink_3e41dffa-f844-5add-b55a-de9274bae8cc)
The Giver: FIrst published in the USA by Houghton Mifflin in 1993.
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins in 1994.
Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2008.
Gathering Blue: Published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company in 2000.
Messenger: First published in the USA by ‘Houghton Mifflin Books for Children’ an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2004.
Son: Published in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company in 2012.
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2014
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers
77–85 Fulham Palace Road,
Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
Copyright © Lois Lowry 2014
Cover design by Charles Brock, Faceout Studio
The Giver: Text copyright © Lois Lowry 1993; A note from the author copyright © Lois Lowry 2003; Why You’ll Love This Book copyright © Margaret Mahy 2008
Gathering Blue: Copyright © Lois Lowry 2000; Cover design by Charles Brock, Faceout Studio
Messenger: Copyright © Lois Lowry 2004; Cover design by Charles Brock, Faceout Studio
Son: Copyright © Lois Lowry 2012; Cover design by Charles Brock, Faceout Studio
Lois Lowry asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: The Giver 9780007369881, Gathering Blue 9780007597277, Messenger 9780007597291, Son 9780007597314
Ebook Edition © 2014 ISBN: 9780007597321
Version: 2014-07-18
Table of Contents
Cover (#u143d3ef9-3338-57ef-8c98-22fc78297ad6)
Title Page (#ue06fc73e-f871-54d5-8db7-20bbabdf51a7)
Copyright (#u4dec0314-1ebf-5149-8df1-f408027eea1d)
The Giver (#u0fa69c3b-79c3-544d-b928-e724d42df3c7)
Gathering Blue (#udf5ca9c4-d8d6-59f1-9bdc-96376079ffb8)
Messenger (#litres_trial_promo)
Son (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Why You’ll Love This Book By Margaret Mahy
Lois Lowry is one of the most outstanding writers for children and young adults in the USA. She is well known for her stories about Anastasia Krupnik – funny stories that have been hugely popular with young readers since the first one was published in 1979.
Lois Lowry has said that she got the ideas for the Anastasia stories from remembering her own childhood and, later, from her own experiences as a parent. But The Giver is a very different sort of story from the stories about Anastasia. And it shows that Lois Lowry can write a sinister book as well as a funny one.
The Giver is possibly the most alarming story of all her books – a disconcerting book … a book for young adults and adults, rather than younger children, though good and thoughtful readers of perhaps eleven up could certainly read it with understanding and appropriately mounting apprehension.
Jonas, the hero of The Giver, lives a highly ordered life as a member of a group who describe themselves as “the community”. And, though Jonas is happy enough with his parents, his lively sister and his friends, he is also beginning to experience strange moments of visions … visions that belong to him alone. He is moving towards great changes, and we the readers move with him. We come to understand that the life lived within his community is ominous as well as protected. People around Jonas have chosen to live extremely ordered lives but, as the story unfolds, the reader comes to see that this order has a particularly dark side. Memories of colour and music for example have been surrendered. But these memories are not altogether lost. They are contained and held by a mysterious man called the Giver. A lot of the story deals with the relationship between Jonas and the Giver – a man who is beyond the community, and a container of those memories of feeling and colour which he can pass on to Jonas, who will (it is expected) become a Giver himself. In order to communicate with the present Giver Jonas is released from the rules that govern everyone else around him, so the story becomes very much a story of self realization – a self realization that is expected, ultimately, to enrich a group of people denied self realization themselves.
As for the ending – well, the reader has to make up his or her own mind about the ending. Is it realistic? Is it symbolic?
Lois Lowry has written a note about The Giver (which you can read at the end of this book), saying that she did not immediately realise that it was different from any other book she had written, until she started receiving letters from readers (mostly adults) in the outside world proving that the story was being widely read. Many people praised it but there were some towns that banned it from their schools and libraries. Lois had intended to write a children’s adventure story, but The Giver turned out to be more than that. While some people hated it, others admired it and in 1993 it won the Newbery Medal.
The Giver is a book that is hard to put down – a book that haunts the reader for days after it has been closed. Have a go!
Margaret Mahy
Margaret Mahy is one of the world’s best-loved authors, writing wonderfully funny children’s stories and ground-breaking novels for young adults. Margaret was awarded the Order of New Zealand in 1993 for her internationally acclaimed contribution to children’s literature and has twice won Britain’s Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature, for her books The Haunting and The Changeover. In 2006, Margaret was presented with the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award.
For all the children To whom we entrust the future
Table of Contents
Cover (#u0fa69c3b-79c3-544d-b928-e724d42df3c7)
Why You’ll Love This Book By Margaret Mahy (#ua72d6f4e-fbd5-5bf6-910d-f0af851b12dc)
Title Page (#ub4853676-9d89-5429-b759-a1603e736c15)
Dedication (#uadd00c22-48a8-5606-860a-b140267e3412)
Chapter One (#u42e57deb-f8fd-5808-8064-40a329420d87)
Chapter Two (#u6ba36f82-1bce-580c-ae3f-d9b2947693df)
Chapter Three (#u6d6fa10b-def5-5e7f-a834-f0ec6a107902)
Chapter Four (#ua433372a-403f-5b8a-91b8-b36f69712468)
Chapter Five (#u6c8567a9-417a-5241-90de-0e763b21787a)
Chapter Six (#u15401a97-5e78-52d9-843c-fd001519bf6d)
Chapter Seven (#u94602437-8540-5e70-bd79-c26e4385e1ea)
Chapter Eight (#u9e689946-9e61-57d1-a63a-546494577cc4)
Chapter Nine (#u13c1fba1-50b5-591c-8408-13af96e9e919)
Chapter Ten (#u35ab509c-3ef2-5bfa-9ed0-6694bd174064)
Chapter Eleven (#u84f580cf-a759-54e7-9947-18fce5e1fe34)
Chapter Twelve (#u200684f0-2fe1-50fb-bdb1-84c1ffbbcffd)
Chapter Thirteen (#u64f12fb2-871e-5326-b08b-e4ddd5b04ef2)
Chapter Fourteen (#uaeb7bbdb-6bd0-5989-ac66-1832f8a296d2)
Chapter Fifteen (#u2f6cb5da-63f9-5968-9bf3-0605313e235e)
Chapter Sixteen (#ufce9bfdf-8feb-57c2-9a3e-c2ce02764a35)
Chapter Seventeen (#u26f24801-8298-516c-8d1b-560fc4c3e2d0)
Chapter Eighteen (#uf0c3bc20-ca60-5ea5-8f78-902cbeeea449)
Chapter Nineteen (#ub3681d38-a342-51a2-b9a9-c772d0d2abac)
Chapter Twenty (#ube4a3730-caa0-5aa1-826c-9258be6560a1)
Chapter Twenty-One (#u13d820ca-0c6f-57c4-b422-7825c018ba25)
Chapter Twenty-Two (#u20fb06aa-b5c4-5359-9cc1-1b928ac72595)
Chapter Twenty-Three (#u1d13ba1b-3afe-5f98-bf0c-ba4c78e81c4a)
A Note from the Author (#u5ad56413-01fd-57c2-bdd8-f8856bfbb1f8)
Spotlight on Lois Lowry (#u46cf8e3c-b1e1-51da-847f-4abb52cbfbf8)
(#ulink_2f4f1be7-e6bf-5078-bbe3-eb25b51ca51f)
IT WAS ALMOST December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened. No. Wrong word, Jonas thought. Frightened meant that deep, sickening feeling of something terrible about to happen. Frightened was the way he had felt a year ago when an unidentified aircraft had overflown the community twice. He had seen it both times. Squinting towards the sky, he had seen the sleek jet, almost a blur at its high speed, go past, and a second later heard the blast of sound that followed. Then one more time, a moment later, from the opposite direction, the same plane.
At first, he had been only fascinated. He had never seen aircraft so close, for it was against the rules for Pilots to fly over the community. Occasionally, when supplies were delivered by cargo planes to the landing field across the river, the children rode their bicycles to the riverbank and watched, intrigued, the unloading and then the take-off directed to the west, always away from the community.
But the aircraft a year ago had been different. It was not a squat, fat-bellied cargo plane but a needle-nosed single-pilot jet. Jonas, looking around anxiously, had seen others – adults as well as children – stop what they were doing and wait, confused, for an explanation of the frightening event.
Then all of the citizens had been ordered to go into the nearest building and stay there. Immediately, the rasping voice through the speakers had said. Leave your bicycles where they are.
Instantly, obediently, Jonas had dropped his bike on its side on the path behind his family’s dwelling. He had run indoors and stayed there, alone. His parents were both at work, and his little sister, Lily, was at the Childcare Centre where she spent her after-school hours.
Looking through the front window, he had seen no people: none of the busy afternoon crew of Street Cleaners, Landscape Workers and Food Delivery people who usually populated the community at that time of day. He saw only the abandoned bikes here and there on their sides; an upturned wheel on one was still revolving slowly.
He had been frightened then. The sense of his own community silent, waiting, had made his stomach churn. He had trembled.
But it had been nothing. Within minutes the speakers had crackled again, and the voice, reassuring now and less urgent, had explained that a Pilot-in-Training had misread his navigational instructions and made a wrong turn. Desperately the Pilot had been trying to make his way back before his error was noticed.
Needless to say, he will be released, the voice had said, followed by silence. There was an ironic tone to that final message, as if the Speaker found it amusing; and Jonas had smiled a little, though he knew what a grim statement it had been. For a contributing citizen to be released from the community was a final decision, a terrible punishment, an overwhelming statement of failure.
Even the children were scolded if they used the term lightly at play, jeering at a team-mate who missed a catch or stumbled in a race. Jonas had done it once, had shouted at his best friend, “That’s it, Asher! You’re released!” when Asher’s clumsy error had lost a match for his team. He had been taken aside for a brief and serious talk by the coach, had hung his head with guilt and embarrassment, and apologised to Asher after the game.
Now, thinking about the feeling of fear as he pedalled home along the river path, he remembered that moment of palpable, stomach-sinking terror when the aircraft had streaked above. It was not what he was feeling now with December approaching. He searched for the right word to describe his own feeling.
Jonas was careful about language. Not like his friend, Asher, who talked too fast and mixed things up, scrambling words and phrases until they were barely recognisable and often very funny.
Jonas grinned, remembering the morning that Asher had dashed into the classroom, late as usual, arriving breathlessly in the middle of the chanting of the morning anthem. When the class took their seats at the conclusion of the patriotic hymn, Asher remained standing to make his public apology as was required.
“I apologise for inconveniencing my learning community.” Asher ran through the standard apology phrase rapidly, still catching his breath. The Instructor and class waited patiently for his explanation. The students had all been grinning, because they had listened to Asher’s explanations so many times before.
“I left home at the correct time but when I was riding along near the hatchery, the crew was separating some salmon. I guess I just got distraught, watching them.
“I apologise to my classmates,” Asher concluded. He smoothed his rumpled tunic and sat down.
“We accept your apology, Asher.” The class recited the standard response in unison. Many of the students were biting their lips to keep from laughing.
“I accept your apology, Asher,” the Instructor said. He was smiling. “And I thank you, because once again you have provided an opportunity for a lesson in language. ‘Distraught’ is too strong an adjective to describe salmon-viewing.” He turned and wrote “distraught” on the instructional board. Beside it he wrote “distracted”.
Jonas, nearing his home now, smiled at the recollection. Thinking, still, as he wheeled his bike into its narrow port beside the door, he realised that frightened was the wrong word to describe his feelings, now that December was almost here. It was too strong an adjective.
He had waited a long time for this special December. Now that it was almost upon him, he wasn’t frightened, but he was … eager, he decided. He was eager for it to come. And he was excited, certainly. All of the Elevens were excited about the event that would be coming so soon.
