The Giver is “A Story About Love” – Gary Schmidt
2014-08-01
Gary Schmidt, Professor of English at Calvin College, and author, most recently of Okay for Now, (a National Book Award finalist), as well as the Newbery Honor and Printz Honor book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy, wrote an article for Examiner.com about his advanced screening of The Giver. Read some excerpts from the article below.
“The Giver, the Newbery Award-winning novel by Lois Lowry, is absolutely one of the most important books in the field of children’s literature of the last fifty years. The original dystopic novel for young people (it turned twenty this year) The Giver raises still-timely, still-powerful questions that people of faith, young and old alike, must confront–everything from euthanasia to our culture’s hiding of reality through euphemism (“drone strikes” as opposed to “assassination” or “murder,” for example.)”
“Now there is a powerful new film adaptation of The Giver produced by Walden Media and The Weinstein Company about to open in theatres across the country. Having just seen the film version of The Giver, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me is that this is really a story about love—and love in many forms.”