Jinjia Mixed Goods: American Girl Dolls with an Asian Flair

Kana here.  We have, over the course of the year, built up a quite the library.  And as it turns out, we haven't actually shown off most of our books yet.  Over the summer, the human found a few stashes of digitized books, and we got ourselves a rather modern library (or rather, late 90s vintage, courtesy of the human's nostalgia).


This week's book collection is the Giver Quartet by Lois Lowry (she of 'Number the Stars', which the human remembers reading way back in 4th grade).

The internet can provide much better summaries (and book reports) than we can, but suffice to say, 'The Giver' is a good introduction of dystopia for those too young for Orwell's '1984'.  Jonas's world seems to work so well.  And then you learn over the course of the book just how things work.

'Gathering Blue' and 'Messenger' expand the world, and the cliffhanger ending to 'The Giver' is finally explained.  The weird magic and how certain people have certain gifts is never explained.  Deus ex machina it is.

The last book, 'Son', came out in 2012 and feels like it's meant for the generation who grew up reading 'The Giver' in elementary school.  The description of C-section and post-partum depression makes much more sense to the generation who'd be of child-rearing age about now.


And now, as always, your chance to expand your library (think of it as the winter reading special):