They called her Water Claire. When she washed up on their shore, no one knew that she came from a society where emotions and colors didn’t exist. That she had become a Vessel at age thirteen. That she had carried a Product at age fourteen. That it had been stolen from her body. Claire had a son. But what became of him she never knew. What was his name? Was he even alive? She was supposed to forget him, but that was impossible. Now Claire will stop at nothing to find her child, even if it means making an unimaginable sacrifice.
Son thrusts readers once again into the chilling world of the Newbery Medal winning book, The Giver, as well as Gathering Blue and Messenger where a new hero emerges. In this thrilling series finale, the startling and long-awaited conclusion to Lois Lowry’s epic tale culminates in a final clash between good and evil.
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. To learn more about Lois Lowry, see her website at www.loislowry.com.
Editorial Review
A designated Birthmother, 14-year-old Claire has no contact with her baby Gabe until she surreptitiously bonds with him in the community Nurturing Center. From detailed descriptions of the sterile, emotionally repressed community, it’s clear Lowry has returned to the time and place of The Giver, and Claire is Jonas’ contemporary. When Jonas flees with Gabe, Claire follows. She later surfaces with amnesia in a remote village beneath a cliff. After living for years with Alys, a childless healer, Claire’s memory returns. Intent on finding Gabe, she single-mindedly scales the cliff, encounters the sinister Trademaster and exchanges her youth for his help in finding her child, now living in the same village as middle-aged Jonas and his wife Kira. Elderly and failing, Claire reveals her identity to Gabe, who must use his unique talent to save the village. Written with powerful, moving simplicity, Claire’s story stands on its own, but as the final volume in this iconic quartet, it holistically reunites characters, reprises provocative socio-political themes, and offers a transcending message of tolerance and hope. – Kirkus Reviews
Book World: ‘Son’ by Lois Lowry concludes series that began with ‘The Giver’
The Washington Post Book Review – September 28, 2012 (Excerpt)
Like a crisp breeze through the election year’s hot rhetorical winds comes “Son,” Lois Lowry’s beautifully wrought political fable that concludes the series she began in “The Giver.” Called “remarkable” and “unforgettable” in a Washington Post review two decades ago, “The Giver” won a Newbery Medal in 1994 and become a classroom staple, the kind of book sure to spark lively discussion. It also consistently ranks among the 25 most frequently challenged books, according to the American Library Association.
“The Giver” starts out pleasantly enough, with a well-organized society going about its business, but the story darkens as the reader realizes the deeper cost of this order: the removal of everything deemed unnecessary or disruptive, including colors, birds, dissenters and a challenging tot named Gabriel, whom the 12-year-old protagonist, Jonas, is determined to save.
The first section of “Son” revisits that place and those characters from the perspective of Gabriel’s teenage mother, and her tender, disquieting story should prove as galvanizing and controversial as its acclaimed predecessor. [Read the full article...]
Review: Lois Lowry’s ‘Son’ a gripping end to ‘The Giver’ series
The Chicago Tribune Book Review – September 30, 2012 (Excerpt)
It’s been 19 years since the publication of Lois Lowry’s pioneering Newbery Medal winner, “The Giver,” which painted a bleak picture of a future society in which color does not exist, love is suppressed and sameness is revered. No one would have guessed that almost two decades later, “dystopian” would be its own genre in the young adult biblioscape, giving rise to blockbuster franchises such as “The Hunger Games,” “Divergent,” “Matched” and now, a follow-up from the author who’s credited with starting it.
“Son” is the Rashomon-style conclusion to “The Giver,” told from the perspective of the young birth mother whose infant was saved in the original book. It’s an intriguing premise that finally resolves the question readers have long pondered: What happened to 13-year-old Jonas and his infant charge, Gabriel, after they fled their well-ordered community? The answer is presented in three sections, or “books,” that read like interlinked individual novellas — each of them taking place in different worlds with characters culled from other titles in what is now a literary quartet that also includes “Messenger” and “Gathering Blue.” [Read the full article...]
The Searcher - ‘Son,’ by Lois Lowry
The New York Times Book Review – October 11, 2012 (Excerpt)
In 1993, when Lois Lowry shocked adult and child sensibilities alike with her Newbery Medal-winning novel “The Giver,” J. K. Rowling had not yet begun scribbling magic words on the back of cafe napkins and Stephenie Meyer had just graduated from her (presumably vampire-free) high school. Suzanne Collins had just sold her first teleplays for the gentle, nonviolent world of children’s television, and “dystopia” was a 50-cent SAT word unlikely to trip off the average sixth-grade tongue.
It’s difficult to imagine, in our post-“Hunger Games” world, how unusual and unsettling it was then for a children’s book to touch on euthanasia, suicide and murder, to couch it all in a bleak vision of political and emotional oppression and to leave its protagonist’s ultimate fate undecided. In many ways, Lowry invented the contemporary young adult dystopian novel. Now, nearly 20 years later — and with a glut of fictional oppressive societies leaving many of us with a bit of dystopia fatigue — she’s returned with a concluding volume that gloriously rebels against the restraints of the very genre she helped to create.[Read the full article...]
UnBound: Battle of the Half-Angels
The Nephillim Chronicles – Book One by Ronnie Massey
Justin and Theo are just normal teenagers with their teenage problems, until the day they meet their biological fathers, Michael and Uriel, two of the few remaining archangels. They learn, they are nephillim, the half human offspring of angels, and they learn they are not the only ones. In the days of old, nephillim walked the earth. Now heaven’s misfits may be all that stands between mankind and the wrath of Lucifer and the Fallen. But how will a handful of teenagers react when they find out, not only are they not human, but they are the most powerful soldiers in heaven’s army? How will they deal with their newly found powers? And will they be able to stop Lucifer?
We are the only country that makes guns, including military-style assault weapons, available to anyone who wants to buy them. This is not freedom. It is a tyranny of death and destruction — a tyranny of which the National Rifle Association is proud. The Washington Post
UnBound: Battle of the Half-Angels
