BOOKS. the giver

someone at school was giving away old copies that were falling apart, so i grabbed one. having never read it, i remember english teachers in the past saying how good this book is, so i saw this as my opportunity to give it a try.
the premise is very orwellian, its about a colony that must follow all these rules and regulations to make their civilization a great utopia. this means denying themselves of many freedoms, and following the guidelines for living that the society has deemed acceptable. the children only get one toy, they must wear uniforms and wear their hair a certain way, once they are of age they are put into certain training jobs that are dictated to them, etc. our main character, jonas, is given a very unusual job, he is called to be the 'receiver of memory' for their community. this means that he is training to be the only one who will learn the truth behind all the rules. he is trained by the current receiver of memory, called the giver. as jonas learns these truths about life he is forever changed and must make the choice to accept the truth or try to make things right.
its a pretty good story well told. the author does a good job of conveying the joys of the community in the laws they carry out. as we see jonas begin to question things, the author allows us to ask the same questions and find out some pretty unexpected things about what is so different in this society. because of these differences, there really is no way that this book could be made into a movie- it would give everything away to quickly! the ending of the story is a bit confusing though, i understand what the author was trying to do, but the descriptions and telling of it all gets muddled a bit. over all, its a great introduction for young readers into the sub genre of big government style books like '1984' and 'brave new world'.