Publication Date: April 24, 2006 | Age Range: 10 and up | Lexile Measure: 660L (What's this?)
Where do dreams come from? What stealthy nighttime messengers are the guardians of our most deeply hidden hopes and our half-forgotten fears? Drawing on her rich imagination, two-time Newbery winner Lois Lowry confronts these questions and explores the conflicts between the gentle bits and pieces of the past that come to life in dream, and the darker horrors that find their form in nightmare. In a haunting story that tiptoes between reality and imagination, two people—a lonely, sensitive woman and a damaged, angry boy—face their own histories and discover what they can be to one another, renewed by the strength that comes from a tiny, caring creature they will never see.
Gossamer is perfect for readers not quite ready for Lois Lowry's Newbery-Award winner The Giver and also for readers interested in dreams, nightmares, spirits and the dream world.
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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
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. 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. And babies always represent the future in the same way children represent the future to adults. And so Jonas takes the baby so the baby's life will be saved, 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. He can be Jonas or not, as you wish.
Lois Lowry is my comfort blanket. When you pick up a Lois Lowry book (and it really doesn't matter if it was "Anastasia Krupnik" or the book I will discuss with you now) you are blessed with the knowledge that this book will fufill the following requirements: It will be good. It will be interesting. It will be wholly original. Lowry has never tapped into our subconscious oddities quite like other authors (like Diana Wynne Jones) have. She doesn't need to. Her books are perfectly thought out little worlds. If you are lucky, they may have some fantastical elements to them, but rather than stand out from the text these elements are as natural as can be. Lowry makes you believe in a kind of real-world magic. And no book better illustrates that idea than the remarkable little, "Gossamer". A comfortable amalgamation of the fantastical and the all-too real, it's one of those rare stories that can claim to have both grit and charm.
An old woman lives with her dog, all by herself, in a two-story house. Unbeknownst to her, she is visited nightly (as are we all) by creatures that make us their business. In this particular case, two such creatures have visited the old woman. One is an old hand at the work they are going to do. The other is known simply as Littlest One. She is sprightly and curious and filled to brimming with questions. By night, these creatures gather the memories they find attached to objects around the home and create dreams out of them. These they bestow to the residents of the home. Only now, the old woman is taking in a foster child for a time. An angry eight-year-old boy with an abusive past and who's dark thoughts prove irresistible to the Sinisteeds. Sinisteeds are creatures that provoke dark nightmares in their dreamers, causing damage to their psyche and a whole lotta pain. Now Littlest must find a way to strengthen the boy who has attracted these creatures so that he can be strong enough to face up to his own ugly memories.
Of course, for all the fantastical dream-creature-like storylines, the real heart of this tale is in the story of the old woman, the boy, and the boy's mother. It's a very real tale too. The boy's mother has gotten out of an abusive relationship and is trying to piece her life together enough to take custody of her son again. And leave it Lowry to get me to tear up when the woman finally gets a good job in an elementary school. I don't tear up over children's books unless the writing is particularly phenomenal.
Good fantasy speaks beyond the magic and fantastical elements of any given tale. Because she has tied in a story of abuse to one of the healing power of dreams, Lowry's story plays out rather beautifully. No mention is made of the fact that, medically speaking, if a person does not dream they go insane. The proof is before your eyes instead. Lowry also takes a rather nice poke at those adults that live in homes that look like they've come out of a magazine (all chrome and glass) but haven't a single homey or personal object in the joint. Pity the poor dream creatures that have to deal with THOSE people.
Even when Lowry is off her game (some might make that argument with "Messenger"), she still has her finger firmly on the pulse of her plot, characters, and setting. There's a straightforward intelligence to her books that children and adults everywhere have come to trust. I don't suppose I could call, "Gossamer" her finest work, but it's a lovely example of the patient storytelling and excellent plotting that we've come to expect of her. It is undoubtedly one of the best books for children in 2006. A wonderful metaphorical tale.
My 11 year old son and I listened to Gossamer driving to and from school. But then we couldn't bear to leave the story behind, so spent the rest of the afternoon huddled around the tape deck. What an enchanting coming of age story. Yes, there is darkness and violence, but such feeling of hope. I cried through the last chapter. Wow. This is an incredible book. And beautifully read by Ms Twomey. I was especially drawn to the idea that so much can be experienced through touch. Seems to me it's the sense most writers underplay. And the writing is so simple, yet so powerful. I would give Gossamer more than 5 stars if I could.
This was my first Lois Lowry book. I read it in one evening. Once I started it, I couldn't put it down. She is an amazing author and this story was like, to me, a fairy tale I wish could come true. As someone who suffers wtih nightmares regularly, from past traumas, I found myself so absorbed in the book and related to it so much. As someone else said, it was difficult to learn of the little boys past abuse, but this story found a way to overcome that and take us all to a hopeful and happy place. A few days later I read The Giver. Lowry is truly an amazing author and has a wonderful imagination that is so easy to relate to. I can't wait to read more of her books.
