The Giver

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Class Handouts:

A Survey: Your opinions about a more perfect society
The List of Terms used in the Community in The Giver in Chapters 1-4
Some Review Questions for Chapters 1-8
Some Review Questions for Chapters 9-12
Some Review Questions for Chapters 13-23
Your Perfect World: The discussion assignment where you create your own planet and social system
The Giver Community's "Life Schedule"
The Giver Community's "Life Schedule" all filled in.
A note-taking sheet with themes, to help with the test essays.
A crossword puzzle over the book: You can do it here online, or look at/print it from the screen here.
Your journal assignments are here, remember.

2009 Reading Schedule

By this date...	...have finished:
	Chapter 3
	Chapters 4, 5, 6
	Chapters 7, 8, 9, 10
	Chapters 11, 12
	Chapters 13, 14, 15, 16
	Chapters 16, 17, 18, 19
	End of the Book

Web Links & Resources:

At Reading Matters is a look at The Giver, along with some other novels you might want to read.
A good list of links about memory, color, language, and other themes related to The Giver, at Planet Book Club.
The Giver is going to be a movie? Yes...probably. They're trying. Keep on top of developments at Hollywood.com.
The Random House publishers teacher's guide to The Giver also has some good things for students in it, including an audio file (you'll need Real Player) from the author.
These SparkNotes over The Giver are probably more reading than a lazy student would want to do, but the study questions might get you thinking.
Brush up on your chapters with these online interactive quizzes (you can print them, too) by Miss Miller in Mountain City, Tennessee, USA.
Carol Hurst's Children's Literature site has a good review of the book.
I stole some ideas from Elizabeth Sky-McIlvain's page on The Giver.
A new site called Shmoop is trying to present books in a new way for students. Their Giver page has links to symbolism, setting, etc., but also a section called "Why Should I Care?".
Here's a web quest on The Giver that requires you to re-write the ending, and think about what a "perfect world" would really be. From the Franciscan University of Steubenville.
This short interview with Lois Lowry by Susie Wilde, done in 1998 just after The Giver won the Newbery Award, reveals some influences behind the ideas and events in the novel.

There is a lot of information about Lois Lowry on the Web:
"My books have varied in content and style. Yet it seems that all of them deal, essentially, with the same general theme: the importance of human connections...The Giver - and Gathering Blue, more recently published...speak to the same concern: the vital need of people to be aware of their interdependence, not only with each other, but with the world and its environment...I try, through writing, to convey my passionate awareness that we live intertwined on this planet and that our future depends upon our caring more, and doing more, for one another."
--From the autobiography at LoisLowry.com.

Lois Lowry has put up her own web page, at--of course--LoisLowry.com. The page of speeches (although she says it's mostly for teachers and librarians) offers some good thoughts. She also answers some Frequently Asked Questions about herself and her books. The Biography page has clickable words that lead to some nice pictures from her photo album. Another nice thing about the site is that Lois Lowry did the illustrations.
Scholastic's Lois Lowry page is a good one. She was also asked questions by students in a Scholastic Author Interview.
The Children's Literature Newsletter, Carol Hurst again, has another short Lois Lowry page.
Another Lois Lowry page, from the Library Sciences people at Rutgers University, tells some further tidbits about her.
In an interview with AOL teenreads.com, Lois Lowry talks about her book, Gathering Blue, which she calls a "companion novel" to The Giver. It's not exactly a sequel, but it is the second book in a trilogy of books. (See below.)

For Teachers:

Some excellent resources can be found in the LIFT Pack for teachers. [Note: This links to a PDF file. You'll need Adobe's PDF viewer to read it. The PDF viewer is free to download.]
Another excellent resource comes from the Facing History and Ourselves project. [Note: This links to a PDF file. You'll need Adobe's PDF viewer to read it. The PDF viewer is free to download.]
A very extensive list of items related to Lois Lowry on the web, and an ERIC bibliography of related articles, has been compiled by Mei-Yu Lu at the Indiana University School of Education.
The Giver is one of the most challenged and banned books (#11 on the list of 100 at the ALA, according to the previous link)currently taught in schools. (An unfortunately headlined article in USA Today calls it a "suicide book".) Read an article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on the issue, upon the publication of Lois Lowry's Messenger. The National Council of Teachers of English, in the US, has an excellent Position Statement on The Students' Right To Read. A site from The Brothers Judd has a well-argued review on many of the issues brought up in the novel by religious conservatives. (If you've never read the reviews from Orrin Judd, a conservative himself but with a streak that's respectful of different points of view, click around for awhile on the Judds' website for awhile if you've got the time.)
Also, try Lois Lowry's collection of her speeches, at her web site.

How does it "really end"? Read the companion books to The Giver!

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