If you read aloud and give a girl the gift of story, she may demand that you teach her to read before she starts to school.
If the girl learns to read, she may want you to read the books that she brings home from the library with her.
If you read her books with her, she may insist on reading your books with you.
If both of you have read the same books, the girl may discuss the books with you.
If her love of reading continues, the girl may grow up to be a librarian.
If she grows up to be a librarian with access to reviews of new releases, you may get special books for Mother’s Day, your birthday, and Christmas.
My apologies to Laura Numeroff for borrowing the pattern from her not-to-be missed picture books beginning with If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, but my sequence happened just this way. The special birthday book – late only because the release date was three days after my birthday – was Son, the last in the Lois Lowry quartet that began with The Giver. Coming out during Banned Books Week made the release time doubly appropriate since The Giver is near the top of every banned book list with its crime of making the reader think.
If you read my “Whatsitsname Book Group” blog, you know I was waiting for the release and had a guess about the name of the book. As I expected, I was wrong. Predictable is not a description for Lois Lowry. But I was happy with the boy who turned out to be the Son.
I highly recommend what the girl, now librarian, said she planned to do. Read the first three if you never have or if you haven’t read them recently before you read this one. In order, the quartet is The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son. Kirkus Reviews says Son stands on its own. It probably does, but as I read, I saw many things that would be missed if the reader had not read the other three.
The book follows the theme set out in the first three books of the value in every person, referred to on page 290. “It had been Jonas, during his time as Leader, who had gently but firmly reminded the villagers that they had all been outsiders once. They had all come here for a new life. Eventually they had voted to remain what they had become: a sanctuary, a place of welcome.” The Giver remains my favorite, but I enjoyed all four.
If you love Lois Lowry books, Son does not disappoint. Neither does the girl who became a librarian.