High school was back in New York City, but by the time I went to college (Brown University in Rhode Island), my family was living in Washington, D.C. I was born in Hawaii, moved from there to New York, spent the years of World War II in my mother’s hometown: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and from there went to Tokyo when I was eleven. I was a solitary child who lived in the world of books and my own vivid imagination.īecause my father was a career military officer - an Army dentist - I lived all over the world. That left me in-between, and exactly where I wanted most to be: on my own. Little brother Jon was the only boy and had interests that he shared with Dad together they were always working on electric trains and erector sets and later, when Jon was older, they always seemed to have their heads under the raised hood of a car. My older sister, Helen, was very much like our mother: gentle, family-oriented, eager to please. (Apr.'I’ve always felt that I was fortunate to have been born the middle child of three. And Matty himself, once a taker, in many ways brings the series full circle, becoming the Village citizen who offers the greatest gift. Because she continues to work in allegorical terms, her lessons about the effects of consumerism on society and the importance of knowing one's history never feel teacherly instead, she allows readers to come to their own conclusions. The author revisits some of the themes of her previous novels (the cost of striving for physical perfection the benefits of inclusion), and takes them to another level. While Lowry intertwines compelling threads from past novels (readers discover what happened to Jonas, and that Kira also has a connection to Village), this story more than stands on its own. Meanwhile, sinister attitudes begin to infiltrate his formerly tolerant Village-most notably in Mentor, the man who 'tamed' Matty-and to threaten the principles on which it was founded. On one such mission, he discovers that he has the power to heal. Now an educated young adult, Matty delivers messages for Leader, the head of Village, traversing the sometimes inhospitable Forest. , lives with the blind man called Seer and helps him around the house. Matty, the scruffy thief from Gathering Blue

Lowry masterfully presents another thought-provoking, haunting tale in this third novel, a companion to The Giver

Messenger by Lois Lowry