I first read Lois Lowry’s Newberry-Medal-winning novel back in 2005, nearly a decade after its initial publication in 1993. This was long before I started reviewing books, yet I recall this story coming as a comfort to me during my first month living alone overseas in China. I had already come to love dystopian novels like George Orwell’s 1984 or Ray Bradbury’s Fehrenheit 451, and this was just something similar. Only for kids. Sort of.

Lowry’s take on this dystopian future is one in which Sameness is the human ideal, and this stretches to all levels of life. Birthing mothers (or “birthing people” in today’s lingo, I guess) produce their requisite three babies, which are then assigned to “parents” who themselves had been assigned to each other. Each family gets two children, and each child grows through the same levels based upon their ages, the “sevens” and “nines,” etc. At twelve, the children are assigned a position in the community to which they are each best suited.

Jonas is different, a boy of twelve who has neither excelled nor failed in anything. He’s best suited to have his hands in everything, and so the elders assign him to the most important position of all, to replace The Giver of the community before the current Giver is released.

The Giver is a man unbound by the many rules of the community, who holds all of the world’s memories, so the community needn’t be bothered by them. What magic lies behind this fact is never discussed—and neither is the lack of color in the world for those unburdened by memory—but that’s just fine. It’s the reality for this world of the future, and we needn’t understand the how? of it.

While the essence of this community sounds like just some mild form of Communism, it’s far worse than that. Only the Giver understands the dark underbelly of this place, and he shares these terrifying truths and memories with Jonas. Together they recognize that change is required and that something must be done.

Lowry’s original novel in what later became a four-book series (along with Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son) has sold millions of copies, and adaptations for The Giver abound. This graphic novel adaptation by P. Craig Russel is just the most recent, but it’s a striking rendition that grandly illustrates the ideas behind Lowry’s words. I was a little irked by the realism in the drawings early on, but they help the reader see this not merely as a fantasy or sci-fi tale but as a possibility for humans, somehow and someday.

The way Russel slowly adds color to Jonas’ world is fun, and the lack of mono-chrome in the colorless world was wise. He includes blues along with the blacks and greys, giving the world some life, albeit no life worth enjoying.

I was surprised with the scenes of what is essentially Jonas going through puberty. He describes his dream of “wanting” to bathe his friend Fiona as he had helped bathe the old people as part of his job, though this “wanting” was new and exciting. His “mother” calls it “the stirrings,” and she tells him it’s time that he start taking the pills that all adults take to keep these stirrings at bay. The delicate honesty with which Lowry and Russel portray this scene was memorable.

One negative thing I have to say about this edition of The Giver has nothing to do with the graphic novel but with Lois Lowry’s pretty horrendous interview that the publishers tagged onto the end of the book. Despite the questions being tossed her way, she had almost nothing to say, yet they published it anyways. Those two pages were a waste of my time following an otherwise delightful book. Not sure why they had it in there.

OK. Enough griping. This book was a great refresher for me on this unnerving dystopian tale, and I recommend it for anyone who’s read the book already. It would be OK as a stand-alone story for someone who’s never read the book, but like the film version of any great novel, it can only go so far.

This book helps illustrate the author’s intent, but it doesn’t interpret it. That’s the reader’s job. Thankfully, Russel keeps it that way.

©2021 E.T.

Read More Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Novels:

• The Last New Yorkers by George Allen England (1911)
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932)
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (1953)
• The Last Ship by William Brinkley (1988)
• Minority Report and Other Stories by Philip K. Dick (2004)
• The Road by Cormac McCarthy (2006)
• The Hunger Games (series) by Suzanne Collins (2008)
• Son of Heaven (series) by David Wingrove (2011)
• Contamination (series) by T.W. Piperbrook (2013)
• Yellowstone (series) by Bobby Akart (2018)
• The Giver by Lois Lowry, adapted by P. Craig Russell (2019)
• Fairy Godparents: Raising a Fairy Child by Indahari Setyo (2020)