Children’s morality is gradually deteriorating following every piece of inappropriate literature that they read. A book that is being challenged is The Giver by Louis Lowry. Set in a future utopian society, the book follows Jonas, a 12-year-old specifically chosen to work with a mysterious man, the Giver, receiving memories of happiness and suffering. The book mentions the killing of infants and many violent references. The Giver contains mature content unsuitable for students to read and must be removed immediately.
A multitude of people in Jonas’s community are killed in a cruel, heartless way, which can damage a student's mental health while reading. Throughout the book, there are multiple incidents involving the euthanization of citizens. Many elderly, infants and rebellious people are killed in this way. Jonas’s father has the job of taking care of newborn children, and at one
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In the community, people believe that sex leads to love which leads to murder and conflict. Jonas had his first feeling of love while dreaming about a friend, Fiona. Jonas is then ordered to take a pill, in order to eliminate the feeling of love. Jonas tries to recollect the thoughts on his way to school, even, “though the feelings were confused, he thought that he had liked the feelings that his mother had called Stirrings. He remembered that upon waking, he had wanted to feel the Stirrings again.” (39) Readers may challenge that this book does not affect students in many ways, and that middle schoolers would not believe that love is bad. Unfortunately, many don’t have the logical and fully mature thinking that adults carry. Middle school students can be easily misled by the restrictions put on Jonas’s dystopian society. As a result, children would have the mindset that love is forbidden and that having no emotion is normal and hide their own thoughts, knowing that it is not