I taught The Giver several years ago, and had a parent complaint over it. I convinced her to let her son read the book. The kids kept a response journal and in the beginning his journals were very negative. He felt this book was against his religion, but by the end of the book his journals were thought-filled, intense, full of great internal discussions, and he said it was one of his favorite books he'd ever read. I've been reading it during downtime in my classroom, and many kids just randomly tell me how much they loved that book. To ban a book like The Giver is an injustice. It has impacted more kids than I can even begin to count, and they thought a little more about their own world and hopefully made them appreciate it a little more.

It must be difficult to endlessly cogitate about, few-new, few- surprising, questions about a work completed nearly two decades ago.
I often wonder if authors, like the late Mr. Salinger, are drawn to seclusion by the thought of having to endlessly justify a word, a thought, a paragraph of a work that is no longer in the author's consciousness.
I bet if I had to deal with it I would just scream.. "c'mon people, time to move on!" but then, the book is new to every new generation of readers, so are the questions, I imagine.
Must be tough! Yet from this dialogue I sense there's still a lot of care and sincerity in the answers.
It was in 2008 when I read THE GIVER to see if it was suitable for my then 8-year-old daughter to read, and became mesmerized by it.
The one part of the book that never left my mind, after becoming familiar with the writer's biography, was the opening of the book..... How terrifyingly sad it was to sense what that needle-nose single- pilot Jet, meant to the writer of the book.... but then, it all made sense.
Cheers!

Actually, my son was still alive when I wrote THE GIVER in 1992. He had served in the first Gulf War as a fighter pilot by then. It was later, in 1995, he was killed in a training accident because a mechanic had made a mistake in servicing the plane and had replaced two parts backwards.

Dear mrs. Lois Lowry,
You will have to excuse the spelling mistakes I make. I am 14 years old and in English class we are reading the book you wrote, know as "The Giver".
It is a wonderful book, which really gets a person thinking about the future. Anyway, what I wanted to know was if at the very end of the book, last chapter, last page, if Jonas and Gabe die. Half of my class thinks he dies the other half thinks he found what he ( meaning Jonas ) wanted. Do you think he dies or survives?

The story of Jonas and Gabe and the Giver have had such a profound impact on my life! I first read the book in 4th or 5th grade when I was very young and it helped shape my ideas, viewpoints and perceptions of the world from then on. I'm currently an adult college student at the age of 23 and am writing about the book for my literature class. I was wondering what the one, most important message you were trying to send to readers was and what meaning you would like them to take away when they are done reading the book. I would be absolutely delighted to hear your response and share it with my class. Thank you so much for writing this book on behalf of everyone I know who has read and been touched by it. You're writing in this book and so many others (Messenger, Number the Stars, the Anastasia books, etc) inspired me to become a lifetime reader and writer and I thank you indefinitely for you could never know how your books helped me escape from a frightening childhood.