The Giver

         I think this is great book to have kids read. It brings up so many interesting concepts about life, love and pain. An interesting concept I liked thinking about while reading it was the concept of the Giver himself. He was the one person who had to bear all the pain of the past by himself. The community never had to think about the Giver or about pain, and so there was no name for him after his training of receiving was over. He got the name the Giver because Jonas gave it to him; he had been known by the community as just the receiver, even though he had stopped receiving for a long time. Jonas knew the Giver by his name Giver but now the community was going to know the Giver as the Giver, not just a receiver, but as the one who would give them the memories of the past and change their lives forever.

An interesting thing I noted while reading it for the second time since middle school was the fact that although this was a supposedly "perfect" community, the people were still very far from perfect. The people were still cruel and judgmental toward one another, even though every possible thing had been done to eliminate violence or evil. For example, when the old woman Larissa called the other older woman dumb and a parent, in anger, called his child by the number 23.