I read maybe 1/5th of The Giver when I was in 5th Grade and immediately found it “boring and unrelatable”…I reluctantly just read it all as a mid 30-something adult and am blown away by what I’d missed.

I remember having this book assigned to my 5th grade class in the late 90s and most students seeming to really like it. I don’t know what was wrong with me… all the talk about fish hatcheries and elders at the very beginning just sounded alien to me and I immediately tossed it in the corner of my room. Maybe I was just more used to \*overt\* fantasy and sci fi and my 10-year-old brain had no concept yet of subtlety and dystopian fiction. Regardless, two decades of millennials going on about how The Giver was the best book they read in grade/middle school gave me a bit of a mild inferiority complex and I just decided to bite the bullet and read it as an adult. I read it all in about 2 sittings and had no idea how sweet and humane the book actually is. The coldness and rigidity of Jonas’ world was initially why put me off to it but the ending is about one of the sweetest and and most beautifully written things ever read and that includes adult fiction for me. I feel like such normie now for gushing about this book up but I get it! Anyone else have a similar experience?

by zzzzzzzzzra