by Lois Lowry
Jonas has grown up in an “ideal,” well-ordered community, where life is easy and comfortable and everyone is always polite. When, at 12, his classmates are assigned to their adult jobs for training, Jonas is not assigned. Instead he is selected to be the next Receiver of Memory. He learns from the previous Receiver—now the Giver—of things both good and bad that no one in his community has ever experienced and of dark secrets behind the order and simplicity of life there.
This book is absolutely beautiful. The love and beauty Jonas learns about ring so true to our own lives, and so do the pain and loneliness. His experience with having choices for the first time reminds us how important our own choices are, especially when we have to make the hard ones.