Son - Lois Lowry - The Worlds Book 4

Son
The Worlds Book 4
Lois Lowry
Thomas Allen & Sons
ISBN 9780547887203

I first read the giver in a university Children's literature course in 2001. It was incredible and the ending was open to so many interpretations. I knew high school students, university students, and retirees who all read it and loved it. The book was so different from anything else I had read and the story stayed with me for a long time. As the others in the series came out, each was an amazing read but each also left some questions unanswered. In this book, that the author states is the last in the series, many of those questions get answered and yet it still leaves much to the imagination.

Son begins in the time of Jonah in his original community. But it spans many years and many miles, following a woman on a quest to be reunited with her child, a child she should never have known, but a child she loved and was willing to give all to know and see again. In a world of different communities, that live by different rules and with different levels of technology, this book ties directly to the Giver, and ties it even more closely to Gathering Blue and Messenger.

This is a story of love - the love of a mother for child, of friends who, if situations were different, would be more. It is the story of adoption, and being taken in and welcomed into a community not your own, and it is the story of journey. And also the journey to find what was lost and the journey to find who you are. It was an amazing read and I will be going back and reading the whole quartet again soon. But as a warning, some fans of the Giver will not like it because the openness to interpretation as that book ends gets wrapped up the way Lowry intends.

 
Books by Lois Lowry:
The Worlds:
The Giver (1993)
Gathering Blue (2000)
Messenger (2004)
Son (2012)

The Anastasia series:
Anastasia Krupnik (1979)
Anastasia Again! (1981)
Anastasia at Your Service (1982)
Anastasia, Ask Your Analyst (1984)
Anastasia on Her Own (1985)
Anastasia Has the Answers (1986)
Anastasia's Chosen Career (1987)
Anastasia at This Address (1991)
Anastasia Absolutely (1995)

The Sam series:
All About Sam (1988)
Attaboy Sam! (1992)
See You Around, Sam! (1996)
Zooman Sam (1999)

The Tates series:
The One Hundredth Thing About Caroline (1983)
Switcharound (1985)
Your Move, J.P.! (1990)

The Gooney Bird series:
Gooney Bird Greene (2002)
Gooney Bird and the Room Mother (2006)
Gooney the Fabulous (2007)
Gooney Bird Is So Absurd (2009)
Gooney Bird on the Map (2011)

Autobiographical:
Looking Back (1998)
Crow Call (2009)

Others:
A Summer to Die (1977)
Here in Kennebunkport (1978)
Find a Stranger, Say Goodbye (1978)
Autumn Street (1980)
Taking Care of Terrific (1983)
Us and Uncle Fraud (1984)
Rabble Starkey (1987)
Number the Stars (1989)
Stay! Keeper's Story (1997)
The Silent Boy (2003)
Gossamer (2006)
The Willoughbys (2008)
The Birthday Ball (2010)
Bless This Mouse (2011)
Like the Willow Tree (2011)