Gathering Blue

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Lame and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed from her squalid village to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians.

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Gathering Blue submitted by SBNB on July 2, 2014, 9:18pm This is a great book! It takes place in the same general world as The Giver, though probably a few years later and not the same city. Besides also being in a post-apocalyptic society, it doesn't really seem to connect to The Giver. You need to keep going to the next book to really see the connection.

telling the future submitted by camelsamba on August 31, 2016, 9:08pm Gathering Blue is set in the future after some catastrophic event. At the beginning of the audiobook, Lois Lowry explains that she imagined the society in Gathering Blue as an alternative to the rigid structure she created in The Giver. Gathering Blue instead relies on a society that is brutish and mean. (I wish I could quote her exact words but my Overdrive loan has expired.) I do not know if this introduction also appears in the print edition, but it explains how this book relates to The Giver.

Kira, our protagonist, was born with a disfigured leg and normally would have been cast aside by the society, but her mother and grandfather protected her as an infant. Her mother's role in the society is to dye threads and patch a ceremonial robe, and Kira helps at the weaving shed. Her mother dies at the beginning of the tale, and a powerful leader defends Kira against those who would turn her out because of her disabilities - the leaders have recognized that she is a gifted needleworker (embroidery, although it is never called that). Despite the harshness of the society, they do value certain artistic skills.

Kira is moved to a protected and pampered residence - along with a boy artist (Thomas) who carves the ceremonial staff, and a very young girl (Jo) who is being groomed for the role of ceremonial singer. They are told they will add to the ceremonial elements, that they will "tell the future": but will they be free to tell the future they envision, or will it be dictated by the guardians? Undercurrents sprinkled in the book made us wonder. In that introduction, Lowry tells us that Kira chooses to define a new future, a different future: we do not learn what that is going to be in the current tale. For that, I gather, we must read the rest of The Giver Quartet.