先前好友向我推荐了一本书叫 The Giver，是曾获 Newbery 儿童文学奖的一部超越儿童的人文科幻小说。回家问了儿子，他说这其实是一套四部曲，他不光已经看完了 The Giver，而且第二本也看过了，都挺有意思。双重推荐，让我兴趣陡涨，儿子立刻开心地说他不介意陪我再读一遍前两本，然后我们可以一起完成四部曲！
正中下怀。上一次我们一起读 Wonder 还是一年多前。那时候我们每天晚上睡前，他读一章，我读一章，妹妹在一旁听书，很是享受。那样美好的时光让我们都很怀念。
于是马上从图书馆同时借了纸质书和音响书，儿子在学校读纸质书，我在每天上下班的路上听音响书，还约定等读完整套书之后，各自写个短评。
听书的时光很美好。小说写的引人入胜，朗读者也绘声绘色，不像前一本 nonfiction 的诵读者，催得我想睡觉。每天往返近两个钟头的车程不再漫长，一天就能听好几章，一个多星期就听完一本。儿子的进度基本和我一样，看来每天也至少泡了一两个小时进去。回到家来，我们时不时聊一聊故事的进展，作者的意图，对接下来情节的猜测。要是儿子读到前面去了，他还小心翼翼金口紧闭地绝不给我剧透。
转眼，四本书都读完了。这部松散的四部曲，前三个故事基本各自为政，略有交集但大体平行发展，直到第四部所有人物才在同一个时空里相遇，让每一个故事都有所了结。个人感觉第一本和第四本的最后部分写得最好。开头构思巧妙新意十足，讲述了一个人尽其职、物尽其用、夜不闭户、丰衣足食的“理想”社会，然而按需分配、诚实守信、幼有所教、壮有所用、老有所终的背后却有着人们根本不再介意觉察的黑暗和人性的遗失。故事最后大结局揭开悬念时，不光让人恍然大悟痛快淋漓，也会有惊讶反思之后带来的沉重的心灵冲击。中间的故事略显冗长，却是通向最后结局的心理和逻辑的台阶，也不能跳过。书作者Lois Lowry 很善于铺垫背景，而且耐心地把悬念藏在平平淡淡的背景里，以至于前面有时让人觉得情节有点拖沓。但是知道了她的这个构架特点，也就知道要耐下性子来等待每本书最后的高潮和亮点。
儿子喜欢读书，却总是懒得写书评。每每学校老师布置的书评作业，也常常让他颇为头疼。这次既然答应了妈妈，总还算写了几行履行承诺。我知道他脑子里的东西比写出来的多得多，茶壶的口还是要慢慢拓宽才行。
先是儿子的版本：
The Giver series' theme is about
bravery and courage. The first book, The Giver, tells us that
anyone can change anything as Jonas brings back the memories of pain, color,
and many other thing that have been lost. When the sequel, the Gathering
Blue, comes in telling us about a different community starring Kira, it
tells us that everyone has a gift even if they also have some part that they
aren't so good at. The book Messenger is about Matty (a.k.a Matt
from Gathering Blue) in the Village. It tells us to persevere and
to sacrifice. You will catch a glimpse of Jonas in Messenger.
As the first three books of the Giver
series tell us about Jonas, Kira, and Matty, Son "glues"
all the characters together. Son is about a young woman named
Claire, who had her baby, Gabe, stolen away from her. She set off an
adventure to find her son. She's willing to do anything just to find her son,
even if Evil had to take away her youth. As the end of the story, Claire found
Jonas to help her and Gabe find each other. Finally, Gabe overcame Evil so that
his mom's youth returned to her.
接下来是妈妈写的几句。感想有，但是用英文表达还是太痛苦了，词不达意，肯定还有好多错，但是既然是约定，还是尽力而为吧。
These are books about imaginary
worlds. The world could be as technically advanced as the community where
Jonas, Claire and Gabe are from (The Giver), or as wildly
primitive as the tribe where Kira and Matt lived (Gathering Blue),
or as purely joyful as the village where all of them finally end up to (Son).
Although the idealistic community and the
tribe look quite different, surprisingly you will find one principle in common
-- everyone has a gift, everyone must be useful, so each person's gift must be
used in the best way. It sounds like a reasonable principle, which will lead to
a highly organized and efficient society. An ideal communist society would be
like that. But you may sense there is something wrong. What is it? The Giver
reveals the dark side in the second half of the book, while “Gathering Blue”
exposes the cruelness at the very beginning -- in such communities anyone who
is "useless" or ineffective will be discarded and destroyed in a
certain way because they are against the “efficiency” and
"perfectness".
What else against the “efficiency”?
The efficiency is all about survival, no matter for more complicate or more
simple forms of life. But as a human being, there are also other essential
things for life – free will and love, which are both defined as
"meaningless" in the book of The Giver, as well as
humanity, the willingness and capability to accept the disables and all the
vulnerable groups.
Why does an individual need free will
to make choices?
"When they have choices, people
make mistakes and bad choices", agreed by the people who lived in the
“ideal” community.
But when everything is assigned and
fully prepared for you - like the way what a baby receives, the whole meaning
of life as a human being starts fading away.
Same thing for love. Jonas asked his
parents "do you love me?" They told him this word is not accurate and
specified. They take care of him, they guide him, they feel proud of his
achievements, but the word "love" is something useless and
meaningless...
Until a mom named Claire traced back
and found her own baby, the natural love is re-discovered. The natural bonding
between a mom and her baby once revealed, Claire found this strange and
confusing feeling, which has been controlled and taken away from other moms in
her community, is inevitable. In “Son”, the last book of the quartet, she
eventually understood that strange while powerful feeling is called love. And
yes, we see the power of love.
These are also books about desire and
greed. Of course, we don't live only with what we need. Above our needs, there
are desires, which is the driving force for the progress of human history and
the source of joys. But what do we trade for our desires? When we don't have
anything else, do we trade away our deep self, our most precious characters? As
the Community in The Giver realized the powder of desire and its
dangerous possibility to lead to greed, the desire, as well as the right of
choice, was taken away from all the people. Indeed, pain was removed, but with
the cost of joys. In the book of Son, the conflict and
wrestling between human's desire and integrity was fully displayed.
陆陆续续和儿子一起读了四本书了，另外三本是 The One and only Ivan, Wonder 和 Masterminds。前两本书讲得都是关于友情、善良和勇气，故事很感人，看到最后我俩泪水涟涟。Wonder 甚至被誉为每个五年级孩子必读的好书。顺带的，365 Days of
Wonder 也成了儿子的最爱。The Giver 和 Masterminds 虽然属于中学生读物，但却在深层里探求了社会结构，社会发展，人性本质和人性需求等复杂问题，不同年龄会读出不同的意味。
从头到尾一起读过书就是不一样，交流起来更加心领神会，也让我更清晰地看到孩子的成长脉络。
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