Book Recommendation: The Giver by Lois Lowry

Young adult novels are a good choice for language  learners. The writing isn't too difficult,  

but the stories are still interesting. Let  me recommend a couple of books that I've  

read and discussed with private students.  Here's the first. The Giver by Lois Lowry.

This is about a boy in a world that for  us is imaginary, but at first it seems  

perfect -- what we can call utopia because  these people have eliminated so many bad  

things. But as you get to know how they run their  society, you understand that it's not perfect,  

and in fact it's immoral and very restrictive. So,  really it's a dystopian society. The boy matures  

into a young man, and he realizes the truth, so  he has to decide how he wants to live his life.