This is Where it Ends is a story about a school shooting in Opportunity, Alabama. The school sits outside of town. We see this story from four students perspectives, and everything happens within the span of fifty-four minutes. It seemed like a normal start to a new semester, the principal had gathered the students and staff in the auditorium for the yearly speech she gives at the start of second semester. When students stand up to leave at the end of the speech, they begin […]
Son
The final book of The Giver quartet is called Son. This book is broken into three parts, and ends up tying the quartet together. We begin with meeting Claire after she has been selected to be a birthmother. We see a new part of the community that Jonas grew up in. Giving birth is hard for her and it is decided that this is not the best job for Claire, and she is reassigned. But she wonders, what happened to her child? Nearly a year later, […]
Messenger
In continuation with The Giver quartet, the third book of the series is Messenger and follows Matt, who is now Matty from Gathering Blue. Also back in this book is Jonas, however he now goes by another name. Matty lives with Kira’s father, who is known in the community as the Seer, (ironic since he is blind). This village is made up of outcasts from other communities. They earn a name as they get older, they are given a new name, such as Mentor, or Seer. Matty is […]
Gathering Blue
As a middle school teacher, I’m always asking my students what they are reading, and this took me back to middle school. In their Language Arts class, they read the book The Giver and were very interested in it. On their own, many of them went of and borrowed the next book in The Giver quartet, Gathering Blue. I knew that since I enjoyed the book when I read it in middle school, I needed to read this book too. This is a different community than the community […]