A book that continues to be read

At yesterday's session of Literary Lunches, Grand Forks Public Schools school board member Cynthia Shabb read from a text familiar to many Grand Forks Central students: The Giver. This Lois Lowry book follows Jonas as he learns about his new role in a community virtually devoid of choice, a community that is completely ruled by sameness.

Shabb, a former English teacher, read the section in which Jonas hears the rules that will govern his new role. She always read a section in which Jonas gets a memory of and experiences snow.

Lowry was at the Empire Theater Friday October 29, 2010 as part of the Greater Grand Forks Big Read. Her picture book, Crow Call, was selected for the Little Read component of this event, because it addresses war. (The Big Read book is The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien, a book that focuses on the Vietnam War.) At Friday's event, Lowry recounted how she got the idea for The Giver.

The following, from a 2004 interview with Lowry, then 68, does the same.

Lowry, 68, got the idea for "The Giver" years ago when she was traveling regularly to visit her parents, who were in a nursing home. Her father was still in decent physical health, but his memory was failing. Her mother was very ill physically, but her memory was intact.

"I would travel home with that in my mind, and I began to think a lot about the concept of memory. When it was time for me to begin a new book, I began to create in my mind a place and a group of people who had somehow found the capacity to control memory," Lowry said. (Karen MacPherson at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette online )