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Gathering Blue (Giver Quartet) (Giver Quartet, 2) Hardcover – September 25, 2012
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The second book in Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet, which began with the bestselling and Newbery Medal-winning The Giver.
Left orphaned and physically flawed in a civilization that shuns and discards the weak, Kira faces a frighteningly uncertain future.
Her neighbors are hostile, and no one but a small boy offers to help. When she is summoned to judgment by The Council of Guardians, Kira prepares to fight for her life.
But the Council, to her surprise, has plans for her. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, the young girl faces new responsibilities and a set of mysteries deep within the only world she has ever known. On her quest for truth, Kira discovers things that will change her life and world forever.
A compelling examination of a future society, Gathering Blue challenges readers to think about community, creativity, and the values that they have learned to accept. Once again Lois Lowry brings readers on a provocative journey that inspires contemplation long after the last page is turned.
“This extraordinary novel is remarkable for its fully realized characters, gripping plot, and Lowry’s singular vision of a future.” —VOYA
The Giver has become one of the most influential novels of our time. Don't miss the powerful companion novels in Lois Lowry's Giver Quartet: Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level7 - 9
- Lexile measure680L
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.94 x 8.25 inches
- PublisherClarion Books
- Publication dateSeptember 25, 2012
- ISBN-100547995687
- ISBN-13978-0547995687
The Amazon Book Review
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From the Publisher
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The Giver | Gathering Blue | Messenger | Son | Number the Stars | |
Discover More Books by Lois Lowry | Twelve-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community. | Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. She struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever. | Once a utopian community that prided itself on welcoming strangers, Village will soon be cut off to all outsiders. Matty must deliver the message of Village’s closing and try to convince Seer’s daughter Kira to return with him before it’s too late. | Claire will stop at nothing to find her child, even if it means making an unimaginable sacrifice. In this thrilling series finale, Son thrusts readers once again into the chilling world of The Giver. | Through the eyes of ten-year-old Annemarie, we watch as the Danish Resistance smuggles almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark, nearly seven thousand people, across the sea to Sweden. |
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Anastasia Krupnik | Anastasia Again | Anastasia at Your Service | Anastasia Off Her Rocker | Anastasia on Her Own | |
Anastasia's tenth year has some good things, like falling in love and really getting to know her grandmother, and some bad things, like finding out about an impending baby brother. | Twelve-year-old Anastasia is horrified at her family's decision to move from their city apartment to a house in the suburbs. | Twelve-year-old Anastasia has a series of disastrous experiences when, expecting to get a job as a lady's companion, she is hired to be a maid. | Anastasia's seventh-grade science project becomes almost more than she can handle, but brother Sam, age three, and a bust of Freud nobly aid her. | Her family's new, organized schedule for easy housekeeping makes Anastasia confident that she can run the household while her mother is out of town, until she hits unexpected complications. |
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The Willoughbys | On the Horizon | |
A delightfully tongue-in-cheek story about parents trying to get rid of their four children and the children who are all too happy to lose their beastly parents and be on their own. | A moving account of the lives lost in two of WWII’s most infamous events: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. |
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Lowry returns to the metaphorical future world of her Newbery-winning The Giver. . . . Plenty of material for thought and discussion here, plus a touch of magic and a tantalizing hint about the previous book’s famously ambiguous ending." (6/15/00) Kirkus Reviews with Pointers
"Lowry is a master at creating worlds, both real and imagined, and this incarnation of our civilization some time in the future is one of her strongest creations." —Booklist, starred review (6/1/00) Booklist, ALA, Starred Review —
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Lois Lowry is the author of more than forty books for children and young adults, including the New York Times bestselling Giver Quartet and 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.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Now she was all alone. Kira felt the aloneness, the uncertainty, and a great sadness.
This had been her mother, the warm and vital woman whose name had been Katrina. Then after the brief and unexpected sickness, it had become the body of Katrina, still containing the lingering spirit. After four sunsets and sunrises, the spirit too was gone. It was simply a body. Diggers would come and sprinkle a layer of soil over the flesh, but even so it would be eaten by the clawing, hungry creatures that came at night. Then the bones would scatter, rot, and crumble to become part of the earth.
Kira wiped briefly at her eyes, which had filled suddenly with tears. She had loved her mother, and would miss her terribly. But it was time for her to go. She wedged her walking stick in the soft ground, leaned on it, and pulled herself up.
Copyright © 2000 by Lois Lowry
Product details
- Publisher : Clarion Books; Reissue edition (September 25, 2012)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0547995687
- ISBN-13 : 978-0547995687
- Reading age : 10+ years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 680L
- Grade level : 7 - 9
- Item Weight : 12 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.94 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #91,598 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

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 studying at Brown University, she married, started a family, and turned her attention to writing. She is the author of more than forty 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. Several books have been adapted to film and stage, and THE GIVER has become an opera. Her newest book, ON THE HORIZON, is a collection of memories and images from Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, and post-war Japan. A mother and grandmother, Ms. Lowry divides her time between Maine and Florida. To learn more about Lois Lowry, see her website at www.loislowry.com
author interview
A CONVERSATION WITH LOIS LOWRY ABOUT THE GIVER
Q. When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
A. I cannot remember ever not wanting to be a writer.
Q. What inspired you to write The Giver?
A. Kids always ask what inspired me to write a particular book or how did I get an idea for a particular book, and often it’s very easy to answer that because books like the Anastasia books come from a specific thing; some little event triggers an idea. And some, like Number the Stars, rely on real history. But a book like The Giver is a much more complicated book, and therefore it comes from much more complicated places—and many of them are probably things that I don’t even recognize myself anymore, if I ever did. So it’s not an easy question to answer.
I will say that the whole concept of memory is one that interests me a great deal. I’m not sure why that is, but I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of what memory is and what it does and how it works and what we learn from it. And so I think probably that interest of my own and that particular subject was the origin, one of many, of The Giver.
Q. How did you decide what Jonas should take on his journey?
A. Why does Jonas take what he does on his journey? He doesn’t have much time when he sets out. He originally plans to make the trip farther along in time, and he plans to prepare for it better. But then, because of circumstances, he has to set out in a very hasty fashion. So what he chooses is out of necessity. He takes food because he needs to survive. He takes the bicycle because he needs to hurry and the bike is faster than legs. And he takes the baby because he is going out to create a future. Babies—and children—always represent the future. Jonas takes the baby, Gabriel, because he loves him and wants to save him, but he takes the baby also in order to begin again with a new life.
Q. When you wrote the ending, were you afraid some readers would want more details or did you want to leave the ending open to individual interpretation?
A. Many kids want a more specific ending to The Giver. Some write, or ask me when they see me, to spell it out exactly. And I don’t do that. And the reason is because The Giver is many things to many different people. People bring to it their own complicated beliefs and hopes and dreams and fears and all of that. So I don’t want to put my own feelings into it, my own beliefs, and ruin that for people who create their own endings in their minds.
Q. Is it an optimistic ending? Does Jonas survive?
A. I will say that I find it an optimistic ending. How could it not be an optimistic ending, a happy ending, when that house is there with its lights on and music is playing? So I’m always kind of surprised and disappointed when some people tell me that they think the boy and the baby just die. I don’t think they die. What form their new life takes is something I like people to figure out for themselves. And each person will give it a different ending. I think they’re out there somewhere and I think that their life has changed and their life is happy, and I would like to think that’s true for the people they left behind as well.
Q. In what way is your book Gathering Blue a companion to The Giver?
A. Gathering Blue postulates a world of the future, as The Giver does. I simply created a different kind of world, one that had regressed instead of leaping forward technologically as the world of The Giver has. It was fascinating to explore the savagery of such a world. I began to feel that maybe it coexisted with Jonas’s world . . . and that therefore Jonas could be a part of it in a tangential way. So there is a reference to a boy with light eyes at the end of Gathering Blue. Originally I thought he could be either Jonas or not, as the reader chose. But since then I have published two more books—Messenger, and Son—which complete The Giver Quartet and make clear that the light-eyed boy is, indeed. Jonas. In the book Son readers will find out what became of all their favorite characters: Jonas, Gabe, and Kira as well, from Gathering Blue. And there are some new characters—most especially Claire, who is fourteen at the beginning of Son— whom I hope they will grow to love.
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Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2021
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As Kira experiences life beyond the small cot she grew up in she begins to understand how wrong things are in the village. In time she sees how she can help change things for the better.
An enjoyable read and continuation of the series. I found Kira and her world less likable than Jonas’s at first. People were not kind or caring towards each other. But as the story progressed I liked it better. Definitely recommend reading the whole quartet
My favorite series of all time has been the Ender's Quartet and I also really enjoyed other Young Adult (YA), Apocalyptic, Utopian,or Futuristic series like the Hunger Games. In all of my searches and the many "Top 10/Top 100" lists that I came across, The Giver Quartet was among the top choices for both teenagers and adults.
Before I get into some of the more detailed review (and potentially spoilers), if you only want to know the basics, here it is: The book Gathering Blue follows The Giver very well. It is an easy to read book, as is the entire series, and if you are an avid reader like me, you could finish the entire series within a weekend. Gathering Blue, which appears to lead the reader into a completely different world from The Giver, ends with a twist that ties the two books and the series together. I thoroughly enjoyed the characters and the plot and would highly recommend this for anyone looking to find a series worth spending time on.
Now, for more detail.
Like many others who have read Gathering Blue, I consider The Giver one of the truly great books that everyone should read. I had read George Orwell's 1984 in the past, but found that The Giver was an even more powerful story. Gathering Blue does not have quite the impact on the reader as The Giver, but I think part of that may be due simply to the fact that it is in the shadow of The Giver and not read as a a separate story. If this were read on it's own, I think it might be even more highly thought of. That being said, it is difficult to review this book without comparing it to The Giver.
The society outlined at the beginning of the book does not appear to be living in such a compelling state of deprivation as what was introduced in The Giver. Kira, the lead character, is endearing as a tough heroine facing an unsympathetic world. She can be related to and she is likeable. The futuristic world that Lois Lowry describes is not unrealistic and does not require the reader to understand a completely foreign world. It could very easily be a version of our own world in the future. For readers who have enjoyed Game of Thrones, Ender's Game, or Dune, this world does not rely heavily upon sci-fi or fantasy ideas. It feels familiar and real, enabling the reader to be transported easily into this brutish and complex survivalist world. Where the Giver was more futuristic, this world in Gathering Blue appears to be more primal.
What I like about this world and this story is that it does feel very much like one of many versions of our own earth's future. Kira lives in a community that does not accept her due to her disability, despite her special talent for embroidery. After suffering through tragedy and being forced to face a challenge for her property, Kira is brought into a world that she had no idea existed. I enjoyed that Lowry tied in our own world so well to the book, to include what Kira describes as the song and images which tell the "story of mankind".
The story was enjoyable, easy to follow, and draws the reader in. Yet, the favorite part about this book is that it is tied to The Giver at the very end. I won't spoil that ending for you, but I will reassure readers that this book provides an intriguing and heartfelt story that leads right into the third book (Messenger). If you enjoyed The Giver, definitely don't miss out on the rest of the series.
The story takes place in a dystopian future, where the physically flawed of any age are discarded and left to die. When a young girl is left orphaned after mother dies from an inexplicable illness, her daughter Kira wonders what will happen to her, as Kira is flawed. She had been saved at birth by her mother’s determination.
The village in which she lives is like something from the Middle Ages. The villagers are hostile to her in large part, as they want to take the land where her mothers cottage was for their own use. The matter is brought before the Council of Guardians, where Kira is given a pleasant surprise and her unique talent put to good use. This eventually leads her to a series of startling discoveries. They will change her world view forever and provide much food for thought for the reader.
My 13 yo daughter enjoy it very much, after chapter 1
Top reviews from other countries

Kira had made friends with an 8yrs old boy Matt, he was always kind to her and was allowed to visit, although taught to stitch by her mother she didn't know how to dye the thread and was sent to Annabelle in the forest, in the room under Thomas he could hear crying, after thinking about what they were doing they realised Thomas, Jo the girl crying downstairs and Kira had mysteriously lost their parents, they were all orphans, Kira wondered how her mother became sick, nobody else was ill

A crippled girl, Kira, lives in a strictly regulated village until she becomes orphaned when her mother dies and sent to “the Fields”, leaving her defenceless among hostile neighbours lacking any communal spirit, which is unusual in a community like this. We begin to find out the functional way of life among her people and how children or “tykes” are regarded - fenced in as they are like cattle while their mothers worked round the house and the men hunted or laboured away from the house. Kira, being “damaged” for her disability, and having lost her father to alleged wild beasts on a hunt just before she was born, should have been sent to the fields to die if her mother had not shown violent resistance. She picks up the weaving trade from her mother, and it is her magical talent that ultimately saves her from being banished and whisked of by the “Guardians” to live in the Council Edifice, a courtly building that is the only urban relic remaining from the past.
Kira’s task as a master weaver and repairer of the Singer’s robe, a ceremonial garment flaunted at the annual Gathering, contains images of the history of the villages, that accompanies the Singer’s epic song like a retelling of it. Her role is monumental because after the repair of the existing painted parts of the robe is done, she is to draw images on the empty portions to fill in the future. She soon finds out she is not the only “artist” on the block, and there is another boy, Thomas, who is kept in another room to work on the Singer’s staff, and together, with the aid of her little friend, Matt, a ghetto boy with his dog, they begin to discover nothing is as it seems and secrets behind the idyll of their newfound comfortable and purposeful lives.
It is remarkable that Lowry builds her story world with seeming ease, for example, in the way the number of syllables in someone’s name places him or her in a specific generation, so a teenager like Kira would have two syllables in her name, her friend, Matt, still a tyke only has a one-syllable name. Kira’s mentor and rescuer Jamison, holds a three-syllable name, while the old woman who teaches her how to colour her threads is called Annabella. It also suggests the evolving identities that are never stable. The locales, like the Fen, which is the village ghetto from where Matt lives, is also true to life in all its poverty and desolation. The sense of unease that pervades the novel, does not go away even when one finishes it, and perhaps that is the point Lowry makes, and what makes this story a hopeful dystopian tale, ironic as the description sounds.


This one is in fact crueler than the society in The Giver. But more straightforward. So being ill or disabled means being left out in a field to die. However some children have gifts, similar to Jonas in The Giver, and those children are removed and looked after to exploit their gifts for the community. Girls and women are oppressed and not allowed an education.
There are some great characters in this, Kira, the main character is very interesting and engaging, and I adored Matt, the naughty little boy with the little dog, and there is a very cute little girl who sings.
Highly recommend this book.
