By: Sampurna Chatterjee, 7E

The Giver is a science-fiction novel written by Lois Lowry revolving around the themes of memory and importance of feelings like love, friendship, pain, anger, etc. The novel plays with a rather fascinating idea of how a perfect society isn’t necessarily happier than a society with hardships.

I personally liked the book a lot because of its uniqueness of theme. Unlike most sci-fi novels, it doesn’t write about the typical robots, time-machines, etc but instead fascinated the audience with how a society where everything is organized and perfect can make the citizens bored and upset rather than contented. I really liked the main character, Jonas, and how the story was told in limited third person, from his point of view.

I would highly recommend the book to eight- eleven year olds. However, the book has a lot of implicit meanings and the older you are, the more you can discover about it. From a scale of 1 to 10, I would rate this book as 8.

By: Pavitra Nannapaneni, 7F

Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert of Green Gables decide to adopt a boy to help Matthew with fieldwork. A misunderstanding takes place and Anne Shirley is sent from the asylum instead. Marilla initially decides to send her back but with a little bit of persuasion from Matthew and a little bit of mercy, Marilla concludes to let her stay.

 The book is a captivating narration of Anne’s adventure by skilled tale teller LM Montgomery. It elaborates on Anne’s struggles and joys in settling into Green Gables. She soon comes across a beautiful, young girl, Diana Barry, who immediately becomes her bosom friend. She begins a rivalry with Gilbert Blythe in academics and is fighting for the Avery scholarship before she knows it, to avoid being a burden on Matthew and Marilla and also to beat Gilbert. Read the book yourself to see what happens next.

I would rate the book a 4 out of 5 and recommend this extraordinary tale to  11 to 12 year olds.