Messenger

Messenger / Lois Lowry. – Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
169 p. ; 22 cm.
Sequel to: The Giver and Gathering Blue

ISBN: 0618404414

1. Community life -- Fiction. 2. Emigration and immigration -- Fiction. 3. Fantasy fiction. 4. Good and evil – Fiction. 5. Healers -- Fiction.

813.54


Matty was a wild and untamed boy when he came to Village, but now that he’s grown some he’s become a useful member of his community. He is the messenger sent through the often dangerous Forest to other communities by Leader. But things have changed in Village recently, the people fear that they may not have enough to share with new arrivals, and they decide to build a wall around it to keep strangers out.

Lowry presents a simple and powerful fable of how greed and fear can warp and poison a community, to make it forget what it once knew, and how self-sacrifice can redeem it.