Gathering Blue

One of the most glaringly unfair rules of Kira's village is that only boys and men are allowed to learn to read and write. No explanation is given for such an arbitrary and sexist practice. Another...

Kira is brave and empathetic. For instance, she is shocked by how the villagers physically and psychologically harm one another. Furthermore, she does not agree with the way the Council manages its...

The answer is both yes and no. Gathering Blue is set in a village that is very dissimilar to the community which Jonas leaves at the end of The Giver. Kira, the main character in Gathering Blue,...

Authors use dystopian fiction to look at current society with a critical eye. In Gathering Blue, Kira's society reflects the possible outcome of human culture if some aspects of modern culture...

Kira, knowing her mother's cott might be burned while she was at the Field of Leaving, had managed to stash away some personal possessions in the clearing so they wouldn't be destroyed. Matt, Kira...

Matt tells Kira that in Christopher's village, "broken" people like herself can get married. Matt says that he saw a boy there about her age, and that, in his opinion, she could marry him if she...

Kira has been given the onerous responsibility of repairing the Singer's robe. In this dystopian society, the Singer is an artist who sings the Ruin Song at the annual Gathering, a very important...

In chapter 22 of Gathering Blue, Kira enjoys a touching reunion with her father, a man she previously thought was dead. Kira had always believed that her father was set upon and killed in the...

At first glance, the culture of Kira's village, as depicted in Lois Lowry's Gathering Blue, seems very different from our "typical" American culture. Look at the customs of naming, for instance....

When Kira is in the field to deal with the death of her mother, Kira's cott burns down. Matt, a young boy from town, is able to save a few items from the fire. It is not clear who set the fire in...

Lois Lowry is a YA/children's author who is known for her work The Giver, which she originally did not intend to become a series. Gathering Blue and Messenger are in between the The Giver and her...

At the end of Gathering Blue, Kira is about to journey with her father to a different town called The Village of Healing. It would mean that Kira would have to leave everyone and everything behind,...

Lowry describes five significant objects in Gathering Blue. These objects are described in detail and/or are referenced multiple times. Each of them has a symbolic meaning as well as being...

All the dyes were natural based on the vegetation grown there. Our ancestors used the same process. Certain plants like onions produce a yellow color when they are boiled. The string would be...

One great external conflict that Kira experiences occurs after her mother's death [man vs. nature]: As for Kira, she had no family, now. Nor any home. The cott she had shared with her mother had...

Gathering Blue takes place in a post-apocalyptic society that has been rebuilt without technology. Because most citizens of the society are illiterate, the community preserves its history orally...

A dystopian society is contrasted with a utopian one. In a utopia, the society is blissful and self-sufficient, whereas a dystopian society is a misconstrued attempt at utopia. In a dystopian...

Matt, the young boy from the Fen who befriends Kira, is thoughtful, alert, and strong-willed. He shows his thoughtfulness throughout the book. Near the beginning of the story, Kira learns that Matt...

In Lois Lowry's novel Gathering Blue, Kira has both intelligence and imagination, courage, and talent. 1. Imagination While her mother is alive, Kira tells the children creative stories that...

To me, the message is that a centrally controlled society is, by its very nature, unjust and destructive of the human spirit. This is a very consistent theme in Lowry's works. In this community,...

The answer to this question can be found in chapter 8. Chapter 7 ends with Kira telling Matt that she wants to go visit Annabella. Chapter 8 begins with Matt saying that he will come with Kira...

Gathering Blue is a novel written by Lois Lowry and is a companion piece to The Giver. Gathering Blue tells the story of Kira, the protagonist, who is an orphan with a deformed leg who must find a...

Thomas the Carver lives in the Council Edifice with Kira. Like Kira, he was orphaned and taken in by the Council of Guardians because of his artistic abilities. Thomas can be described as friendly,...

Kira, Thomas and Jo are possessed of an almost magical talent that gives them the ability to, respectively, weave incredibly intricate scenes with beautiful colours, carve amazingly detailed...

Well, hyperbole is just another word (a literary word, mind you) for exaggeration. It is pretty easy to find, both in this book and in others. However, please realize that it is an error to ask...

I believe that this question is asking about events that happen in the first two chapters of the book. The book begins with Kira's mother having died, and that is a big problem for Kira. Kira lives...

The main conflict is man vs. society. The people in Kira's village don't accept anyone who is handicapped. If a person becomes handicapped through injury or disease, or if newborn babies have any...

This is definitely an interesting question, because with the arrival of her father Kira has all the proof she needs that the Guardians whom she serves have probably killed her mother and definitely...

Kira's scrap of cloth is one of her earliest bits of work which was produced because of her incredible talent, that she was not aware of doing herself and her hands just produced as if by magic....

A "wild" boy from the Fen (forest), Matt takes a certain personal risk when he salvages Kira's things from her mother's cott before it is burned. (This was half-superstition, but also a measure to...

In Chapter Three of this excellent dystopian classic we are introduced to "The Gathering," which we are told happens once a year and is when the Singer, an important person in the community, sings...

At the very beginning of this excellent novel we are told that Kira's mother died after a "brief and unexpected illness," which does little to raise our curiosity until we begin to understand more...

The rather insidious and disturbing theme that rears its ugly head in this book is one of control and the lengths that some people will go to in order to maintain that control. As the novel...

In chapter eight of the Lois Lowry's novel Gathering Blue, Kira, the main character, has to go to Annabella's house to learn how to make dye. The path there lies through the woods, and Kira is...

Gathering Blue contains three kinds of irony: verbal, dramatic, and situational. Verbal irony occurs when words mean the opposite of what their literal meaning suggests. Dramatic irony is when...

The climax of a work of literature is defined as being the most emotionally tense point of the plot before the falling action and the final resolution. Arguably, there are potentially many...

Kira's first problem is one of survival. As she is both handicapped (she limps) and orphaned, she is excluded from the community. One woman even tries to force her to give up the small shelter...

Obviously there are lots of variations in dystopian literature, and so there is no one size fits all approach. However, there are some themes that can be gathered together that occur in many...

I do not have the book "Gathering Blue" in front of me, but in general terms I can say that art has an element of expression in it that skill does not. For example, if a person is...

Matt lives in an area known as the Fen, which is a lower-class area equivalent to a slum in our culture. Kira lives in the village, and those who live in the Fen are closely associated with village...

Matt matures and grows more courageous over the course of Gathering Blue. In chapter 1, Matt meets Kira coming back to the village from the Field of Leaving. She hopes he will help her rebuild her...

The Robe and the Song are both historical stories that the Council shares with the people in their society. When Kira gets the job to repair and restore the robe, she realizes that it's one way the...

It is not clear, but the story suggests that the Singer who performs the incantations in the annual ritual of "The Ruin" does so against his will. Such is the case of the little girl named Jo who...

Gathering Blue depicts a post-apocalyptic society. The exact form the apocalypse took remains cryptic in the novel, but as the story begins, the "civilization of the ancestors" had ended long ago....

After Kira's mother dies, Vandara makes accusations against the girl, whose leg is twisted. Vandara, who wants the little section of land that Kira has accuses the girl of being unfit, eating too...

According to Common Sense Media, Gathering Blue is an appropriate choice for readers over the age of eleven. The target audience for this book, along with the rest of The Giver quartet is middle...