Gathering Blue

Gathering Blue
by Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue
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Book Summary Information

Author: Lois Lowry
Reader: Katherine Borowitz
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Format: Unabridged
Published: 2000-10-24
ISBN: 0736658378
Publisher: Listening Library

Book Reviews of Gathering Blue

Book Review: Loved This Book!
Summary: 5 Stars

I always say when it comes to audiobooks, the narrators either makes it or breaks it. The Narrator of this book was awesome! She brought the book to life. Add that to a great story and you've got one heck of an enjoyable listening experience. If asked my opinion I would recommend the audio version of this book to anyone.

I loved the characters in this book. Kira is such a talented and inquisitive young girl. Thomas another very talented boy. Matt the street boy you can't help but love. All these amazing characters in a world that seems so primitive.
There's Jamison, the man in charge of Kira and Thomas. You want so bad to believe he's a good man but at the same time you can't help but wonder what he's hiding. In a world where babies, old people, disfigured/disabled people are thrown out into the field to die, you have to wonder really what's going on in their world that seems is in and of itself, cut off from anywhere else.

The ending surprised me but I don't want to spoil anything so I will leave it at that.

I've read the Giver by Lois and I was not let down with this book, if anything I'd say this one was even stronger, more powerful of a book.

Summary of Gathering Blue

Approx. 5 hours, 4 cassettes

In her strongest work to date, Lois Lowry once again creates a mysterious but plausible future world. It is a society ruled by savagery and deceit that shuns and discards the weak. Left orphaned and physically flawed, young Kira faces a frightening, uncertain future. Blessed with an almost magical talent that keeps her alive, she struggles with ever broadening responsibilities in her quest for truth, discovering things that will change her life forever.

As she did in The Giver, Lowry challenges readers to imagine what our world could become, how people could evolve, and what will be considered valuable. Every reader will be taken by Kira's plight and will long ponder her haunting world and the hope for the future.


Lois Lowry's magnificent novel of the distant future, The Giver, is set in a highly technical and emotionally repressed society. This eagerly awaited companion volume, by contrast, takes place in a village with only the most rudimentary technology, where anger, greed, envy, and casual cruelty make ordinary people's lives short and brutish. This society, like the one portrayed in The Giver, is controlled by merciless authorities with their own complex agendas and secrets. And at the center of both stories there is a young person who is given the responsibility of preserving the memory of the culture--and who finds the vision to transform it.

Kira, newly orphaned and lame from birth, is taken from the turmoil of the village to live in the grand Council Edifice because of her skill at embroidery. There she is given the task of restoring the historical pictures sewn on the robe worn at the annual Ruin Song Gathering, a solemn day-long performance of the story of their world's past. Down the hall lives Thomas the Carver, a young boy who works on the intricate symbols carved on the Singer's staff, and a tiny girl who is being trained as the next Singer. Over the three artists hovers the menace of authority, seemingly kind but suffocating to their creativity, and the dark secret at the heart of the Ruin Song.

With the help of a cheerful waif called Matt and his little dog, Kira at last finds the way to the plant that will allow her to create the missing color--blue--and, symbolically, to find the courage to shape the future by following her art wherever it may lead. With astonishing originality, Lowry has again created a vivid and unforgettable setting for this thrilling story that raises profound questions about the mystery of art, the importance of memory, and the centrality of love. (Ages 10 and older) --Patty Campbell

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