Gathering Blue
by Lois Lowry
Published: January 24, 2006
Genres: Dystopian, Middle Grade
Format: eBook (215 pages)
Source: Gift
Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever. Every reader will be taken by Kira’s plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.
Spoiler free even if you haven’t read the first book in this series.
Gathering Blue is about an orphan girl, Kira, with a gift of dyeing and weaving threads. The community and the characters are completely different from The Giver. The story feels nothing like The Giver until you get to the end, where Lois Lowry ties the two books together in a beautiful way. And yes, you get to find out at the end what happens to Jonas. I liked contrasting this society with that of Jonas’s from The Giver. In some ways this community is worse off because there is poverty, hunger and no education. But in some ways this community is better than Jonas’s because there is color, personality, deep family love, and some freedom. Not a lot of freedom, but some.
I loved the naming system in this world. I found it very creative. How many syllables your name has is a status of how old they are. I loved how beautiful the writing was. Lois Lowry is a master and making you turn the pages. With every page you get a sense of something else being not quite right (as she said at her signing) and that’s what kept me glued to the story. She goes into a lot of depth of what the main character is thinking and feeling which I loved. The story sucked me in all the way until the ambiguous ending. I have a feeling she likes those… :) She said at her signing that she likes leaving things up to the imagination. If the ending is done right, I say that I have to agree. And Lois knows how to end it just right. I found this book to be another powerful story from her about family and love.
Content Rating: Everyone
About Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry is known for her versatility and invention as a writer. She was born in Hawaii and grew up in New York, Pennsylvania, and Japan. After several years at Brown University, she turned to her family and to writing. She is the author of more than thirty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors, among them the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award, the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Award, the California Young Reader.s Medal, and the Mark Twain Award. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, NUMBER THE STARS and THE GIVER. Her first novel, A SUMMER TO DIE, was awarded the International Reading Association.s Children.s Book Award. Ms. Lowry now divides her time between Cambridge and an 1840s farmhouse in Maine.
My name is Jessica. I love to read Young Adult and classic literature. I’ve been a book blogger for six years and I haven’t gotten tired of it yet. I’m a very curious reader. Writing about all the questions and thoughts I had while reading a book is the best hobby ever.
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