But the Council, to her surprise, has plans for her. When she is summoned to judgement by The Council of Guardians, Kira prepares to fight for her life. Her neighbors are hostile and no one but a small boy offers to help.

Left orphaned and physically flawed in a civilization that shuns and discards the weak, Kira faces a frighteningly uncertain future. Her mother had been dead, now, for four days, and Kira could tell that the last of the spirit was drifting away … Now she was all alone. In the telling it questions every value we have taken for granted and reexamines our most deeply held beliefs. Told with deceptive simplicity, this is the provocative story of a boy who experiences something incredible and undertakes something impossible. When his selection leads him to an unnamed man -the man called only the Giver -he begins to sense the dark secrets that underlie the fragile perfection of his world. But Jonas has been chosen for something special. Jonas watches his friend Fiona named Caretaker of the Old and his cheerful pal Asher labeled the Assistant Director of Recreation. It is a time in which family values are paramount, teenage rebellion is unheard of, and even good manners are a way of life.ĭecember is the time of the annual Ceremony at which each twelve year old receives a life assignment determined by the Elders.

Thus opens this haunting novel in which a boy inhabits a seemingly ideal world: a world without conflict, poverty, unemployment, divorce, injustice, or inequality. “It was almost December, and Jonas was beginning to be frightened.”

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