50 Fun Facts About The Giver

Who wrote The Giver?

She had already won a Newbery Medal for Number the Stars before The Giver earned her a second one.

In which year was The Giver first published?

It arrived four years after Number the Stars and won the Newbery Medal the following year.

Which major children's literature award did The Giver win in 1994?

The same book also picked up the 1994 Regina Medal and the 1996 William Allen White Award.

How old is Jonas when the novel begins?

The 2014 film aged him up to 16 so the cast could play a romance that is barely hinted at in the book.

What is the name of the plan that removed pain, strife and emotional depth from society?

Under it the community also lost color, climate and terrain, leaving a flat world in every sense.

What position is Jonas selected to inherit?

The holder stores every memory from before Sameness and is the only person allowed to read forbidden books.

At which annual event are children assigned their life's work?

Jonas is the only child not called in turn, which the Chief Elder explains afterward as a deliberate omission.

What job does Jonas's father hold in the Community?

The role means caring for infants, which is what makes the later release video so devastating.

What physical trait do Jonas and the current Receiver unusually share?

The baby Jonas's father brings home has the same trait, a sign that he too can receive memories.

Which normally forbidden act do Jonas's new rules permit him to do?

He is also allowed to withhold his feelings from his family, cutting him off from the nightly sharing ritual.

What is the first memory the Giver transmits to Jonas?

Jonas has never seen snow, a hill or a sled, since climate control and flattened terrain removed all three.

What does the Giver show Jonas to introduce him to color?

Even color was surrendered under Sameness, so every object in the Community reads as the same flat tone.

Which two painful experiences does the Giver pass on as darker memories?

These are the memories that broke the previous apprentice, and they are what the Community wants shielded from.

What was the name of the Giver's previous apprentice?

She could not endure the darker memories and was released, which sent her memories flooding back into the Community.

The Giver's failed apprentice turns out to be his what?

He plans to stay behind and help the Community cope with its returned memories before joining her in death.

What is the name of the infant Jonas's father brings home at night?

He only keeps the name if he grows strong enough to be assigned to a family; otherwise he faces release.

In everyday Community speech, what are released people said to have gone to?

The word hides a lethal injection, which Jonas only learns when he watches a recording of his father at work.

In the video Jonas watches, why is one newborn twin released?

The smaller twin is killed by injection and put down a trash chute, which is how Jonas learns what release means.

How do Jonas and the Giver plan to limit the search once Jonas leaves?

The plan is abandoned when Jonas flees early after learning the baby is about to be released.

What does Jonas believe he hears for the first time at the end of the novel?

He sleds toward a house with colored lights and a Christmas tree, though the scene may be hypothermia setting in.

What name does Jonas use for his mysterious ability to perceive what others cannot?

He uses it at the border to find a sled waiting at the top of a snowy hill, mirroring his very first memory.

At a 2009 festival, what did the author joke about Jonas to end the debate over the ending?

The later Quartet books confirm it, with Jonas turning up as the leader of a village called Village.

Roughly how many copies has The Giver sold worldwide?

A 2012 School Library Journal survey ranked it the fourth-best children's novel of all time.

Where did The Giver rank on the ALA's most challenged books list for the 1990s?

It slipped to #23 in the 2000s and #61 in the 2010s, but it is still assigned in many middle schools.

Which family experience inspired the author to write The Giver?

He kept forgetting her sister's long-ago death, and she imagined a world where people are spared painful memories.

The author partly based the Community's setting on what kind of place from her childhood?

Her father was an army dentist, so the family moved between closely guarded posts across the US and abroad.

Which earlier book earned the author her first major children's book medal, in 1990?

It is set in Nazi-occupied Denmark and also won the National Jewish Book Award in the children's category.

In which city was the author of The Giver born?

Her parents first named her Cena after a Norwegian grandmother, who telegraphed to insist on an American name instead.

How old was the author when her first book, A Summer to Die, was published?

A Houghton Mifflin editor read her Redbook short story and suggested she try writing for children.

How many books make up the series that began with The Giver?

The group is called The Giver Quartet, and the final book ties all the earlier storylines together.

Which companion novel was published in 2000, seven years after The Giver?

It follows an orphan named Kira in a very different community where the weak are left in the fields to die.

In the 2000 companion novel, which color can no one in Kira's village make?

Kira learns dyeing from an old woman named Annabella, who also tells her there really are no Beasts.

What physical disability does Kira, the heroine of the second Quartet book, have?

Her society normally leaves the disabled to die, but a council member argues her embroidery gift makes her worth keeping.

What task is Kira given to justify her place in her village?

Her friend Thomas is the woodworker who maintains the staff that helps the Singer remember the society's history.

Who is the title character of the third Quartet book, published in 2004?

He is the only person who can cross the lethal Forest safely, and he discovers he can heal by touch.

In Messenger, what role has Jonas taken on in Village?

He is known only by his title, since everyone in Village receives a true name on reaching maturity.

Which sinister figure runs the Trade Mart in Messenger?

He swaps people's best qualities for whatever they desire; one man trades away his birthmark.

Who is the protagonist of Son, the final Quartet book?

She is the Birthmother of the baby Jonas carried out of the Community, and she spends the book trying to find him.

What are the three part titles of Son?

The first part runs alongside the events of The Giver, seen from a Birthmother reassigned to a fish hatchery.

In Son, what does the heroine trade to be taken to her son?

The bargain turns her into an old woman, the same kind of cruel exchange Trademaster offered in Messenger.

Who directed the 2014 film adaptation of The Giver?

Critics praised the visual grace but felt the film never dug into the novel's ideas; it scored 34% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Which actor plays the title character in the 2014 film?

He had chased the project for nearly 20 years and originally hoped to direct it with his own father in the part.

Which actor's 1998 death ended the original plan for him to play the Giver?

His son Jeff eventually took the role himself when the film was finally greenlit in December 2012.

Who plays Jonas in the 2014 film?

His Jonas is 16 rather than 12, and his best friends Asher and Fiona get much bigger roles than in the book.

Which pop star appears in the cast of the 2014 film?

Meryl Streep, Katie Holmes and Odeya Rush round out a cast far starrier than the film's $25 million budget suggests.

In which country did principal photography for the 2014 film begin?

Shooting started in Cape Town and Johannesburg in October 2013 and wrapped in Utah the following February.

Which band's song 'Ordinary Human' was featured in the 2014 film?

Marco Beltrami composed the score, and the soundtrack also included Tori Kelly's 'Silent'.

In the film, what vehicle does Jonas steal to flee with the baby?

Asher is then ordered to hunt him with a drone, but drops the pair into a river instead of capturing them.

Which actor narrates the audiobook edition of The Giver?

The novel has also become an opera, a one-hour stage play and a 2019 graphic novel drawn by P. Craig Russell.

Which classic novel did reviewer Natalie Babbitt compare The Giver to?

Writing in The Washington Post, she called the book a warning in narrative form that had never been told for children.