Revisiting tales of an Assistant Pig-Keeper and a memory keeper

This trip back to Miss Grove's book list takes short looks at Lloyd Alexander's Prydain and Lois Lowry's "Community"

Today I’m jumping back into a project to read through the book list handed out every year by my middle school reading teacher. It is, of course, not the exact same list as back then because - believe it or not - she kept teaching after I moved on to high school and added more books over the years. It’s also a project that’s had a number of fits and starts over the past few years. Before I get into new material, I thought I would share a couple of entries originally posted on Instagram.

The Chronicles of Prydain - Lloyd Alexander

Back in fifth grade, Mrs. Campbell introduced our class to a series of books that I quickly came to love as a kid in that in-between age. I must have read them through twice in middle school, and I remember a soundtrack of my own making that went with the books. “Wayfaring Stranger” from Emmylou Harris’ 1980 album, Roses in the Snow, will always be connected to the fourth book of the series (Taran Wanderer) in my mind.

So this series was a natural place to start in my weird quest to read all the books on my favorite reading teacher’s book list. It’s fascinating how different the books are now. I see them from an adult’s perspective and can clearly see them as the coming of age story they are. It’s easier to see how brilliantly Lloyd Alexander crafted the series, leaving tiny hints and clues throughout the books to lead to its epic conclusion.

What I didn’t expect was that as I was listening to them as audiobooks, I would remember certain key lines word for word after more than 30 years. It was wonderful to visit Prydain again, and I suspect I won’t wait another 30 years to visit again.

“Is there not glory enough in living the days given to us? You should know there is adventure in simply being among those we love and the things we love, and beauty, too.”

― Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron

The Giver - Lois Lowry

A continuing theme in this project will, I suspect, be how much differently these books land depending on how old you are when you read them. No matter whether its through first time through or the third or fourth time through, each reading will stir up its own thoughts and realizations.

The story takes the reader into a world without the family as we experience it. It’s a land where careers are decided for children by the Community that has given up everything that makes life interesting, opting instead for predictability, sameness, and pain-free lives - their vision of Utopia. When 12-year-old Jonas was chosen to be the sole receiver of the communities’ memories, he begins to understand the Community more deeply and questions everything he’s been told.

I first stumbled upon this book as a 20-something taking graduate classes at the college at which I worked. I honestly don’t remember exactly what I thought of the book then, but I do know that, with a few more decades under my belt, the image of a people who collectively give up individual thoughts, memories, and emotions to avoid pain isn’t as far-fetched as I once thought it was if you think about the myriad ways we’ve discovered to numb ourselves.

But, set against our current political zeitgeist of anti-immigrant, anti-DEI, anti-LGBTQ, anti-anything that diverges from the stereotypical norm of an imagined American yesteryear, the Community’s ideal of sameness becomes chilling. May we, like Jonas, find freedom in allowing ourselves - and others - to be different.

“The community of the Giver had achieved at such great price. A community without danger or pain. But also, a community without music, color or art. And books.”

― Lois Lowry, The Giver