The Giver - Lois Lowry
You can go here to read my updated and revised review of this book at my new blog.

A beautiful, dark, gentle, and frank journey through what is, at first, a boy's search for himself - for manhood - and becomes a search for us all into humanity and into the great, frightening unknown. I can say, in all truthfulness, that I feel more for this main character - essentially a scared and naive stunted teenage boy - than I ever will for any other teenage protagonist.

A book for people who are realists, and who recognize the fact that there are universal dark truths that come with a personal awakening from the mind of a child and into that scary transitional phase between childhood and manhood. I think that most of the problems that come from people contesting this book is the way that the boy thinks and what he faces within himself, rather than the Utopia that he was born into. The thought of a child being awakened to issues such as sexuality and death is always a topic that provokes anger, even hostility, in some. I think that despite the message that most people will walk away with from this book, I would encourage people to see the book more as a coming of age story than anything, and to remember that eventually facing universal, ugly truths is a part of growing up, something that we experience with the main character through the course of the book.