Banned Books: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

Kira is lucky to be alive. Even luckier still to be granted a place by the Council of the Guardians. Her mother has died from an unknown illness and her father was killed by beast while her mother was pregnant with her. Kira was born with a twisted leg, and if not for the prestige and position of her maternal grandfather she would have been discarded. She has lived and she is strong, though not as physically capable as others. Now she is an orphan. An orphan gifted with immense skill with a needle and thread. It is because of that gift that she has been given a home and protection. But things aren’t always as they seem. As time passes she begins seeing clues to the life she will have to live forever. Kira is meant to design the future and there is much in her world that needs to be changed.

Gathering Blue is a dystopian young adult novel that follows the struggles of Kira, a girl who in this community would have been left for dead because of her disfigurement. Her mother, Katrina, has always fought for her daughter and for them to survive, but now she is gone. Kira has no one and learns very quickly that other people are willing to watch her suffer and possibly die if it means that they will benefit from her loss. Unknowingly, those in positions of power have been observing her skills and growing talents. Kira’s life now changes for the better and she is moved into circumstances she had never imagined. But there are things she isn’t being told and she wants answers. She wants the truth about her family and to understand how this world came to be after The Ruin.

Gathering Blue is a dark glimpse into what our society can become. The old and disfigured can be disregarded without a second glance. Jealousy and envy are the motivations of the majority. Children are raising themselves. Fear runs rampant. Yet there is this one girl who has nothing and is tasked with repairing and eventually designing a piece of revered art. This is a story about strength and overcoming all of the tribulations and hardships one may experience. Life isn’t fair and Kira is an obvious example of that. I enjoyed this novel. Lowry is a gifted writer who is great at producing a well-developed and completely imagined world. Her characters are full of depth, dimension and compassion. Gathering Blue was an intense novel that I found easy to immerse myself in.

Lowry wrote Gathering Blue as a companion to her previous novel, The Giver. I’ve found both books to be extremely imaginative dystopians with rather grave outlooks on what the future can become. Life can be disregarded easily and people are manipulated and controlled in both novels. The Giver showcased an ideal Utopia that was actually a world filled with sameness where no one has an identity or any degree of individuality. In Gathering Blue however there is very little organization and loads of chaos. They are two different representations of worlds after a collapse but they deal with a lot of the same themes. I find it interesting that The Giver has been banned numerous times for violence, sexuality, and infanticide while Gathering Blue includes all of this as well and I can’t find any records of it being challenged or banned. I even contacted the American Library Association regarding Gathering Blue to make sure I hadn’t missed any references and there is nothing. So why am I including a book that has no record of being banned or challenged in my Banned Books theme? It all goes back to the question of why books are banned. These two novels, part of the same series, the predecessor more successful than the sequel but dealing with the same issues and only one is banned. Why is that? Why was it not okay to discuss these issues in the first novel but acceptable to reintroduce these ideas in the second? This is something that needs to be included in our discussions when books are banned. Novels like Gathering Blue can be used to defend the notion of exploring these themes in novels and in questioning the process of banning or challenging books all together.