I chose Andrew Clements’ response to the NY Times question about what was causing the rise of darker themes in young adult works in recent years. Basically, his opinion is that in our current rapid information age, where all the terrible things that happen are disseminated to us in full color, rapid fire news segments, something must be dark indeed to put the darkness of our real lives in perspective. As he says, he “enjoyed the sharp contrast between [his] safe and normal… life, and the horrors… of [his] reading life.”

I definitely agree with him. I feel like the children of today are exposed to way more horror than children of the past were, at least in a visceral way. World War II may have been the most horrendous war in history, but kids didn’t have access to all the news about it so suddenly and vividly.

Clements’ point can be related to The Giver in a couple of ways. Obviously at the time Lowry wrote the book this kind of ultra-saturated media content was beginning to take its toll. Another more thematic way that it ties in, though, is in that the characters in The Giver are purposefully protected from the kind of truth that the children of today are receiving. It is interesting to consider what the characters in the book would think of a dystopian novel… I imagine they would have no context to weigh it against (all of them apart from, of course, the Giver himself). It is helpful in perceiving why young adult books from earlier times were not so arresting as they are now.

– Chris Kimsey