The Giver
by Lois Lowrey

In the ‘ideal’ world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children’s adolescent, sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community’s Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are ‘released’ –to great celebration– at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also ‘released’, but with no fanfare.

[spoiler title=”Click for More”]Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment: the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society’s collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. [/spoiler]