Lowry, Lois
Entry updated 15 June 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1937- ) US author of Young Adult novels whose strong-hewed intensity is clearly manifest in the Giver series starting with The Giver (1993), Gathering Blue (2000) and Messenger (2004), all three tales set in Pocket Universe enclaves in what may be a planetary Ruined Earth venue, though no engendering catastrophe is clearly indicated, over and above the destructiveness in general of Homo sapiens. In the first ostensibly harmonious world of the first volume, which won a Newbery Medal in 1994 despite some controversy over the underlying harshness of the Dystopia it depicts, a twelve year old, possibly with Psi Powers, is selected to become a balancer of the books, a kind of sin-eater: it will be his task to remember the costs of maintaining a state of frictionless bliss. The Giver was filmed as The Giver (2014) directed by Philip Noyce.
Gathering the Blue casts a similarly gifted protagonist from another enclave into a similar tumult; in Messenger (2004), set a few years later, a minor character from the previous books lays his spirit on this underworld and the tortured forests of the planet, healingly; and in Son (2012), the original protagonist is able to begin a new life in a protected seaside Keep, through the discovery of her son, who had been hidden by the powers that be. Gossamer (2006) is fantasy. [JC]
Lois Ann Hammersberg Lowry
born Honolulu, Hawaii: 20 March 1937
works (selected)
series
Giver
- The Giver (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993) [Giver: hb/]
- Gathering Blue (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company/Walter Lorraine Books, 2000) [Giver: hb/]
- Messenger (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company/Walter Lorraine Books, 2004) [Giver: hb/]
- Son (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2012) [Giver: hb/Charles Brock]
- The Giver Quartet (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2014) [omni of the above four: Giver: hb/Rachel Newborn]
individual titles (highly selected)
- Gossamer (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company/Walter Lorraine Books, 2006) [hb/]
- The Birthday Ball (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010) [illus/hb/Jules Feiffer]
nonfiction
- Looking Back: A Book of Memories (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998) [hb/]
- Looking Back: A Book of Memories (Boston, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2016) [exp of the above: hb/]
links
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