#CanLitChoices: "The Giver" alternatives

The Giver
Written by Lois Lowry
Bantam Books
179 pp.
Ages 11–14
RL 5.9
1993

This novel, winner of countless book awards including the Newbery Award, the School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and the William Allen White Award, is a favourite novel used in the intermediate grades, usually Grades 7 or 8.  Written at RL 5.9 (this means a child should be able to read this at the ninth month of Grade 5), The Giver is often considered science fiction, although we would most likely consider it dystopian now.

The themes of the book include the following:

• authority/power
• community
• oppression/intolerance
• responsibility
• courage

The following youngCanLit focuses on dystopian societies and would serve beautifully as updated and alternative novels to The Giver.  For each, I have looked at the key themes of The Giver in terms of the youngCanLit selection.

All Good Children

Written by Catherine Austen

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-55469-824-0

300 pp.

Ages 14+

2011

• Authority/Power: Chemrose International, which implements the NEST program
• Community:  New Middleton, owned by Chemrose, is a gated community free of environmental disasters that trouble the shanty towns outside its gates
• Oppression/Intolerance: genetic status (e.g., ultimate, best-of-three, throwaway), deformed adults (due to chemical contamination), troublemakers
• Responsibility: to accept mandatory vaccinations, to protect the children and others from harm, Max keeping Ally and Xavier safe after they are vaccinated
• Courage: to evade the vaccinations, to help those debilitated by the vaccinations, to escape and help others escape

Ashes, Ashes

Written by Jo Treggiari
Scholastic Press
978-0-545-25563-9
341 pp.
Ages 12+
2011

• Authority/Power: Sweepers under the direction of Dr. Lessing and the doctors at Roosevelt Island
• Community:  the co-operative group of farmers, hunters, and scavengers that live in The Hell Gate
• Oppression/Intolerance: S'ans (scarred survivors of the plague), the uninfected 
• Responsibility: to rescue friends captured by the Sweepers
  
• Courage: to survive alone in Central Park, to evade the hazard squads of Sweepers, to accept the S'ans, to join The Hell Gate community, to trust Aidan

Blood Red Road

Written by Moira Young

Doubleday Canada

978-0-385-67183-5

459 pp.

Ages 14+

2011

• Authority/Power: the King who rules through his police, the TonTon 
• Community: the palisaded and gated city of Hopetown, the Free Hawks in Darktrees, the former society of Wreckers 
• Oppression/Intolerance: slaves, people high on chaal, cage-fighters, Free Hawks
• Responsibility: to keep a promise to find Lugh, to keep family together, to protect Emmi 
• Courage: to search for Lugh, to leave the isolation of Silverlake and venture to Hopetown, to endure the cage-fighting, to return to save Jack from the fire, to shorten Epona's death, to go on to the Big Water in the West

 

  

Eye of the Wolf

Written by Troon Harrison

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

299 pp.

Ages 14+

2003

• Authority/Power: the Governing Corporation, Coalition of Southern Alliance Nations
• Community: different communities of the North and South
• Oppression/Intolerance: needy Northerners, illegals, refugees, sugar-friends, promise-fathers
• Responsibility: to find Chandra's kidnapped mother, to keep others in the North safe from a secret plot to infect them with a fatal virus
• Courage: to rescue her mother, to rescue a wolf pup, to stand up to Hernandez, to cross the border illegally without papers 

Flux

Written by Beth Goobie

Orca Book Publishers

258 pp.

Ages 12-16

2004

• Authority/Power: Interior Police who seek control through thought
• Community: the controlled caste-system of the Interior vs. the anarchic Outback community
• Oppression/Intolerance: those who have been chipped, those who worship the Goddess Ivanka, Outback community
• Responsibility: of mothers to their children, Deller wanting to save his brother
• Courage: to escape to the Outback, to resist the thought police, to become self-sufficient, for self-determination, to endure experimentation, to evade capture

Hunted

Written by Cheryl Rainfield

Fitzhenry & Whiteside

978-1-55455-226-9

316 pp.

Ages 13+

2012

• Authority/Power: Government of Normals who use torture and propaganda to oppress the Paranormals
• Community: of Normals and Paranormals, built on fear of each other
• Oppression/Intolerance:  Paranormals with a diversity of gifts such as telepathy, telekinesis, etc., Para-lovers, Para-sympatizers, Para-supporters
  
• Responsibility: to register if a Para, to help Paras to evade detection, to educate Normals about Paras, to save those who are innocent, to risk their own lives for those they love
• Courage: to evade detection, to endure torture, to stand up for what is right, to surrender when necessary, to trust in others, to love unconditionally

A Teacher's Guide (.pdf) for Hunted is available at Cheryl Rainfield's website.

 

 

What Happened to Serenity?
Written by PJ Sarah Collins
Red Deer Press
978-0-889954-53-3
222 pp.
Ages 12-15
2011

• Authority/Power: Father, leader of the Community, is the only one who can ask questions
• Community: All members, except Father, are called Sisters and Brothers
• Oppression/Intolerance:  Those who ask questions are punished, with warnings, humiliation and ultimately less-than-favourable Life Roles
  
• Responsibility: Katherine feels the need to determine what has happened to Serenity, her best friend's little sister; Katherine feels that she must help her younger brother to not ask questions to prevent him from disappearing too
• Courage: Katherine is determined to see what is beyond the Community so that she might find out what happened to Serenity, even though she has been punished for her curiosity

Leave comments if you have any other suggestions for The Giver alternatives or to select an age-old novel that needs refreshing with #CanLitChoices.

CLA Book Award Winners Announced!

Can you hear the virtual fanfare emanating from the Canadian Library Association?  You must, because the announcements of winners have just been published.  From extraordinary shortlists to outstanding winners, the selection committees have once again done their association proud. 

Congratulations to the Winner:

My Name is Elizabeth!

Illustrated by Matthew Forsythe

Published by Kids Can Press

Also congratulations to the Honour Books selected:

Small Saul                                       Migrant
Illus. by Ashley Spires               Illus. by Isabelle Arsenault
Publ. by Kids Can Press                            Publ. by Groundwood

Congratulations to the Winner:

The Whole Truth 

By Kit Pearson 

Published by HarperCollins Canada

Also congratulations to the Honour Books selected: 

 

  

Dragon Seer’s Gift                    That Boy Red

By Janet McNaughton                     By Rachna Gilmore

Publ. by HarperCollins Canada                Publ. by HarperCollins

Congratulations to the Winner:

All Good Children 

By Catherine Austen

Published by Orca Books

Also congratulations to the Honour Books selected: 

Karma                      This Dark Endeavour
By Cathy Ostlere                                By Kenneth Oppel
Publ. by Penguin Canada                      Publ. by HarperCollins


Full press releases are available at the Canadian Library Association website here.

All Good Children

by Catherine Austen

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-55469-824-0

300 pp.

Ages 14+

2011

Here's a way to start out 2012: read about a future that is so terrifyingly probable that you wonder how we're ever going to stop it from happening.  Catherine Austen's All Good Children may be science fiction but it certainly alludes to the direction we may be heading.  How many readers have heard a teacher, librarian, parent or any adult who works with young people declare repeatedly about young troublemakers taking all of their time and efforts?  If you have, then All Good Children could be our future, sadly.

Max Connors and his best friend, Dallas Richmond, would both consider themselves fifteen-year-old troublemakers and smile at that label.  In their gated community of New Middleton, owned by Chemrose International, they pull a lot of pranks, don't hold back their opinions of others, live for their RIGs (Realtime Integrated Gateways) and religiously follow Freakshow, an "entertaining" reality show in which deformed adults (as a result of chemical contamination) compete against each other.  The boys and their families are actually very fortunate: first, by living in a region devoid of environmental disasters such the drowning of New York City or desiccation of Phoenix; second, by living in homes in New Middleton, rather than the tents or shanties of the forests outside the gates; and, third, by attending academic schools because of their genetic status (Dallas is an ultimate, and Max a best-of-three) and not being the throwaway kids of the trade schools. 

In fact, Max's little sister, Ally, a six-year-old, has been very fortunate having missed the first week of school when the family (Mom, Max and herself) attended a funeral in Atlanta.  Upon their return, Ally notes that all the Grade 1 and 2 students are acting kind of slow and fuzzy, emoting very little, repeatedly using phrases about being lucky to be in school and that all their teachers deserve respect.  Consequently Ally is cited as not fitting in at her academic school and transferred to a trade school.  With a bit of investigating at the middle school, Max, his brilliant but quirky neighbour, Xavier, and Dallas learn of a new motivational leadership program called NEST (New Education Support Treatment) being delivered to all students, youngest first, via vaccination.  Max's mother, a nurse at a geriatric facility where patients are subjected to a similar treatment,  is determined not to allow her children to be vaccinated and initiates plans to evade the mandatory program.

While the plot keeps the reader on edge, anticipating exposure of Max and Dallas' deception and the family's plan for evasion, the moral dilemma of identifying children as "good" or not and consequent programs to improve their status was far more compelling to me.  Skillfully, Catherine Austen ensures that Max is seen as a smart aleck kid who has moments of brilliance and compassion, helping the readers clarify their own perspectives on this new world and its way of doing things.  Does Max need to be turned into a "good" child or is he already such a child, just an individual?  Who is able to judge a child's "goodness": a parent/guardian, a principal, a teacher, the child?  Think about the number of mothers of criminals who will claim that their children have good hearts or would never have done anything like that.  Really?  Should I trust their assessment or look to the evidence?  Having seen enough students similar to Max in my classes, I would never classify him as a "good child" but I would surely support his right to be an individual.

Moreover, while mass vaccination of a population is not unusual (e.g., against polio and small pox), their use to ensure compliance and the lack of opportunity to decline treatment is more akin to forced psychiatric drugging than "motivational leadership".  A rose by any other name?  Be the child or the parent/guardian and the perspectives may be very different, whether it is called nesting or psychiatric treatment.  Dallas' father certainly has a different perspective than his son and Max's mom.

As in her first book, Walking Backward (Orca, 2009), which was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association's 2010 Book of the Year for Children Award, in which a family comes to terms with the mother's death, Catherine Austen poignantly reveals the psychological workings of a family under duress with parent and children all searching for clarity and understanding and always hope.  Charmingly, hope is offered in a country called Canada.