The Giver Trivia
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98 free The Giver trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Giver has been a middle-school staple and a banned-books-list regular since 1993, which is exactly why it still gets argued about. These The Giver trivia questions cover the novel itself — the Ceremony of Twelve, the first memory, what release really means — plus the three companion books, the 2014 film and the author behind it all. Every answer is sourced, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Good for a class review, a book club or a reader who just finished the last page.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who wrote The Giver?
Lois Lowry
Lois Lowry also took the photograph on the cover: the face is Carl Nelson, a painter she once profiled for a magazine, who later went blind.
Q 02Which major children's literature award did The Giver win in 1994?
Newbery Medal
Newbery Medal night brought no verdict on the ending: accepting it, the author said readers hoping for the true interpretation would be disappointed, because there is a right one for each of us.
Q 03Which friend of Jonas in The Giver was smacked as a small child for saying smack when he meant snack?
Asher
Asher got a whack from the discipline wand each time the wrong word came out, a story the Chief Elder retells before naming him Assistant Director of Recreation.
Q 04In The Giver, what name is given to the plan that removed pain, strife and emotional depth from society?
Sameness
Sameness also did away with color and with any weather that did not suit the crops, giving up surprise of every kind for a safe and predictable life.
Q 05In The Giver, which position is Jonas selected to inherit?
Receiver of Memory
Receiver of Memory is a post for one person at a time, and the old man who holds it lives among shelves of books in a community where homes keep only rule and reference books.
Q 06In The Giver, at which annual event are children assigned their life's work?
The Ceremony of Twelve
The Ceremony of Twelve runs in birth-number order, and the Chief Elder passes straight from Eighteen to Twenty, skipping Jonas, before announcing he has been selected instead.
Q 07In The Giver, what job does Jonas's father hold in the community?
Nurturer
Nurturer means caring for the newborns, and he admits to peeking at the naming list early so that he can call one struggling baby by name.
Q 08In the novel The Giver, what unusual physical trait does Jonas share with the old man who trains him?
Pale eyes
Pale eyes stand out in a community where almost everyone's are dark, and the sickly baby staying with Jonas's family has them too.
Q 09In The Giver, which normally forbidden act do Jonas's new rules permit him to do?
Lie
Lie, says the last rule on his list, and it shocks him so much that he starts to wonder whether every adult in the community was told the same.
Q 10What is the first memory the Giver transmits to Jonas?
Sledding down a snowy hill
Sledding down a snowy hill delights Jonas, who has never met snow, a hill or a sled: climate control ended the snow, and hills went because they slowed transport.
Q 11In The Giver, once Jonas notices red, which memory does the old man transmit to show him the other colors?
A rainbow
A rainbow ends the lesson in which Jonas learns that the flicker he had noticed in an apple and in Fiona's hair was the color red.
Q 12Which two painful experiences does the Giver pass on as darker memories?
Hunger and war
Hunger and war come late in the training: on the battlefield Jonas lies with a shattered arm beside a dying soldier until he can bear no more.
Q 13What was the name of the Giver's previous apprentice?
Rosemary
Rosemary asked for release ten years before Jonas was chosen, and the memories she held flooded back into the community, which is why his rules forbid him to apply for it.
Q 21In The Giver, how does Jonas try to hide from the heat-seeking search planes during his escape?
Recalling memories of cold
Recalling memories of cold is his only defense, and he shares them with the baby whenever a plane passes, though each one grows fainter the farther he rides from the community.
Q 22In The Giver, what does the old man share when Jonas asks for his favorite memory?
A family Christmas
A family Christmas, with grandparents by the fire, teaches Jonas the word love, and when he asks his parents whether they love him they chide him for imprecise language.
Q 23The Giver ranked 11th on which American Library Association list covering the 1990s?
Most challenged
Q 14The Giver's failed apprentice turns out to be his what?
Daughter
Daughter is a word he holds back until the escape is planned: he will not flee with Jonas because, once the community can bear its memories, he wants to be with her.
Q 15In The Giver, what is the name of the infant Jonas's father brings home at night?
Gabriel
Gabriel frets at night until Jonas, patting his back, accidentally passes him a memory of sailing, the first sign that the baby can receive memories too.
Q 16In The Giver, where do people in the community say the released have gone?
Elsewhere
Elsewhere sounds like a gentle retirement, but a recording of his own father at work shows Jonas that release means a lethal injection.
Q 17In The Giver, why is one newborn twin released in the recording Jonas watches?
Identical members are forbidden
Identical members are forbidden because two people who look alike would cause confusion, so Jonas's father weighs the pair and sends the lighter twin to his death.
Q 18How do Jonas and the Giver plan to limit the search once Jonas leaves?
Fake his drowning
Fake his drowning, that is: the old man would tell the community the river had taken Jonas, but the boy has to flee early when he learns the baby is about to be released.
Q 19At the end of The Giver, what does Jonas believe he hears for the first time?
Music
Music and singing rise from the lights ahead, and he thinks he hears it from the place he left behind too, though that may be only an echo.
Q 20In The Giver, what name is given to Jonas's mysterious ability to perceive what others cannot?
Seeing beyond
Seeing beyond first shows itself when an apple he is tossing with a friend seems to change in mid-air, which turns out to be his first glimpse of the color red.
Most challenged books of the decade, that is: objections cited its treatment of euthanasia, yet the same novel became a staple of middle school classrooms.
Q 24Which family experience inspired the author to write The Giver?
Her father's senility
Her father's senility meant he could no longer recall what had happened to her sister, who had died young, and she began to imagine a world where painful memories are lifted away.
Q 25The author of The Giver partly modeled its tightly ordered community on what kind of place from her childhood?
Army bases
Army bases were home for much of her childhood, her father being a military dentist, and at eleven she lived in a fenced American enclave in the middle of Tokyo.
Q 26Which earlier book earned the author of The Giver her first major children's book medal, in 1990?
Number the Stars
Number the Stars follows a Danish girl whose family helps her Jewish friend escape the Nazis, and it also won the National Jewish Book Award.
Q 27In which city was the author of The Giver born?
Honolulu
Honolulu was only the first stop, because her father's career kept the family on the move: New York came next, and after the war Tokyo.
Q 28In The Giver, what must Jonas start taking every morning once he reports his first Stirrings?
A pill
A pill every day, from the first Stirrings until the move to the House of the Old, keeps desire switched off, and Jonas later throws his away to hold on to his new feelings.
Q 29Which companion novel was published in 2000, seven years after The Giver?
Gathering Blue
Gathering Blue follows an orphan named Kira in a harsher, more primitive village, where the sick and the weak are dragged to a field and left to die.
Q 30In the second book of The Giver Quartet, what does an old dyer tell Kira about the beasts everyone fears?
There are none
There are none, the old woman says, and she dies soon afterward, leaving Kira to wonder what really killed the father she was told the beasts had taken.