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My favorite book is "The Giver." It is about a boy named Jonas who lives in a so-called utopia where memories are erased. Jonas sees through this facade, and the book follows his journey to freedom, where memories exist.
"The Giver" is the perfect book. It has emotion, drama, thoughtfulness, relatability, and a message of individuality.
I interviewed the author, Lois Lowry. Lowry has won many awards, including the Newbery Award for "The Giver." We talked about "The Giver," the importance of books, and her childhood.
Lois Lowry: My father was a career army officer, so I was born in Honolulu because that's where he was stationed at the time. My mother took her children, my older sister and me, back to the small town where she had grown up. So I grew up without my father. I learned to read before I began school, and reading became a very important part of my life, probably in part because my mother, who had been a teacher before she married. Always, always read to us. And so literature became an important part of my life. And at first, it was, you know, kiddie books, talking bunnies, and all of that. But I was always allowed to read. There was no book censorship in my house. I was allowed to read any book that was in my home or any book in the public library. And so I branched out and I read books that were too old for me, but that didn't matter. Books remained as they always had been, very important to me. Books were always there as an inviting alternative to real life.
Landon Keaton: What inspired you to write "The Giver"?
Lowry: Writers are inspired by their imagination. However, you can usually pinpoint something that triggers an idea. I frequently visited my parents, who were getting old and lived in Virginia. My father's memory was disappearing the way it does when you get old. He looked at a picture of his two little girls. He said, 'There you are with your sister. I can't remember her name.' And then he said, 'Whatever happened to her'? And I realized he had forgotten my sister. She had died when she was young. And the death of their first child was something that was probably the worst thing that had ever happened to them. And yet he had forgotten it. And I started thinking, would it be a good thing if we were able to simply forget everything that makes us sad or scared? And that became the idea for my book.
And what do you hope to do?
Keaton: I plan on attending Wright State.
Lowry: Now I'm feeling jealous of you. I want to be 16 again and looking forward to doing all that stuff. I'm very interested in your school situation because, you know, in my day, school was a simpler place. You didn't have media training of any sort in a school that I went to. And I just, I think you guys are so fortunate to have access to all that stuff. I'm just very interested in education and the forms that it takes. And I think you're in a good situation. Lucky you.
Keaton: I'm grateful to have interviewed the author of my favorite book.
Lowry: It was good to meet you, and I wish you well.
Thank you to Joanne Casale, the Media Arts teacher at Ponitz Career and Technical Center, for making this story happen. WYSO Youth Radio is made possible with support from people like you, the Virginia W. Kettering Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council. It's produced at The Eichelberger Center for Community Voices.
