Gathering Blue

by Lois Lowry • Book 2 of the Giver Quartet

Teenage Kira lives in a futuristic society with an authoritarian ruling class that... read more

Teenage Kira lives in a futuristic society with an authoritarian ruling class that controls everything, including creativity. Her fellow villagers shun Kira after her mother dies. But a member of the Council of Guardians who is impressed with the girl’s weaving ability saves her from certain death. Kira quickly gains a comfortable new home inside the Council Edifice where she is assigned to work on maintaining and restoring the ancient Singer’s robe, a ceremonial garment with the history of Kira’s people woven into it. While her new life is highly regulated, she has some freedom to interact with other creative people working on assigned tasks. These interactions, coupled with Kira’s access to her people’s history, cause her to begin to question the things she’s accepted as true. This dystopic future society by Lois Lowry explores some of the same issues she raised in The Giver (Houghton Mifflin, 1993): how storytelling and ritual play an important part in keeping a culture alive, and how access to history is the key to finding truth. (Ages 13-16)

© Cooperative Children's Book Center, Univ. of Wisconsin - Madison, 2001

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