Son, by Lois Lowry






Lois Lowry has written more than thirty young adult books. She is famous for her creativity and ingenuity. Lois Lowry has won many awards, including the Newberry Medal for two of her books.











Son begins in a futuristic town, then travels to a seaside village, and finally ends in a secluded village in the woods. It takes place in the future. The main characters are Claire and Gabe, her son. Claire grew up in the futuristic town.






In this town, people’s jobs are chosen for them by the committee, and since Claire didn’t do very well in school, she was chosen to be Birthmother. Birthmothers are the women who birth the community’s babies, which are then given to their assigned couple. Her first birthing goes wrong, and she is sent to work in a fish hatchery. But she secretly visits the Nurturing Center to see her baby son. However, her son will not sleep at the Nurturing Center and is taken home every night with one of the Nurturers. The committee decides that he will not be assigned to a couple and is to be sent away, which means killed. The son of the Nurturer who took him home runs away with the baby and saves him. In her confusion and fear, Claire runs onto a supply boat which sails away with her on it and gets into a shipwreck.






Claire washes up on the beach of a small seaside village, her memory gone. She lives there for years, gradually remembering through little things that trigger memories. After remembering her son, she asks a young cripple a couple years older than her to help her climb the cliff, the only way out of the village. He became crippled from climbing it. He helps her train and they fall in love. He became a cripple not for climbing the cliff, but what happened to him at the top. Claire made the climb and was offered a trade by a man in black- her youth for her son. She makes the trade and finds her way to a secluded village in some woods as an old lady.

She watches her son, now an adolescent play with his friends from afar. She finds the leader of the village and tells him her story. He tells Gabe to find the man in black, called the Trademaster, and defeat him. The Trademaster nearly corrupted the village a few years ago. Will Gabe defeat him and restore Claire’s youth before she dies?






The theme of Son is to be careful what you trade away in exchange for something else. Be sure that it is not a piece of what makes you whole. It could also be to never give up on what’s important, even when reaching it seems impossible.






Son is a fascinating, quick-paced book. The way Lois Lowry has created Claire’s controlled hometown is captivating. Son is a great finale to the Giver quartet. Vivid details make this unreal story seem very possible. This futuristic world is unlike many of the other dystopian books that are so popular nowadays. I would definitely recommend this book.