Written by Lois Lowry
Published by Houghton Mifflin (redesigned 2012)
ISBN 9780618055814

Imagine a community where if you have even the littlest thing wrong with you, you are sent to die. That is the way it is in Kira’s community in the book Gathering Blue. It included the meaning of friendship, family, loss and injury in an entertaining plot line. Many interesting twists and turns appear in Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry.

In this companion to The Giver, Kira, a two-syllable girl loses her mother to disease and is taken to a court to see if she can live. Arguments arrive as soon as they see her useless twisted leg but stop dead in their tracks after discovering her amazing work with threads. She is sent to a wing to work on the Singer’s robe when she meets Thomas, a carpenter, Jo an orphan singer, and Matt who help her make her threads and find out what really happened to her family. She uncovers huge secrets about the community and the people who live there.

Lois Lowry created Gathering Blue in a way that kept me thinking and entertained. I would surely recommend it. My favorite part is when Kira met Jo because it made me wonder why the council was making her do the things she was and why she was doing them at such a young age.

If you are looking for a book to read, try Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry. It makes you wonder what will happen next and how people could be different than you think they are.

—Megan Zamow, 6th Grader