The Giver

It is not always a comfortable thing to be the centre of so much attention and controversy. But it makes me think about what it means to be “comfortable” – the very thing that the community of The Giver had achieved at such a great price. It was a community without danger or pain. But it was also a community without music, colour or art. And it was a community without books.

Lois Lowry

I could not possibly have planned any of this. I sat down in 1993 to write an adventure story and to explore, for my own reasons, the concept of the importance of memory in our lives.

Somehow, unintentionally, I tapped into something that fed a hunger out there.

Today, as I write this, four cities/towns in the USA have selected The Giver as their “community read” – the book that the entire town is asked to read, and then – picture this, a whole town! Adults and kids! What a wonderful thing! – to discuss.

Schools across the country make it part of their required reading. Christian churches use it as part of their religious curriculum. And at the same time, countless people give it as a Bar Mitzvah gift.

It was used in the tenth grade in German public schools. In Germany an entire population of young people must study the seduction of totalitarianism as part of their own country’s tragic history. Many of them start by reading The Giver.

I was told that it was the first American children’s book translated into Thai.

And I suppose I should tell this part, too: one piece of mail was disconcerting enough that I had a conference with the FBI and was advised, for my own safety, not to visit a particular city in the USA in the immediate future.

The Giver began to be translated into other languages, and with its French title, Le Passeur, it was voted the favourite of the children of France and Belgium one year.

A town in the Midwest removed the book from its public schools.

A public hearing was held in a California town to deal with “The Giver issue”.

A website appeared devoted entirely to a denunciation of The Giver and referring to it – or perhaps

I found my name on the official list of “Most Challenged Authors” again and again.

challenges came a little later. They took me by surprise. Suddenly there began to appear an occasional distraught letter from someone who called me “godless” or “perverted”.

“Jesus would not be pleased with you,” one woman wrote me in what appeared to be a trembling hand.

My mailman, Jack, an affable guy, began to make wry comments about the weight of his bag. I gave him a large tip at Christmas. By the time I found myself in Antarctica that winter of the Newbery – surrounded by icebergs – I had begun to think that my mail, back home, was something of a tip-of-the-iceberg phenomenon.