Age: 4th-6th grade
Award: Newbery

Jonas is a satisfied eleven-year-old living and shares his feelings with his parents, does not cause embarrassment upon others with prying questions, and volunteers at future career possibilities. While these actions are the dreams of a parent reader, we soon find out that Jonas lives in a rule-bound society where his life is carefully mandated by a society proclaiming itself utopian. One can be released from the society, but it is followed with great shame. When he and all his classmates turn twelve, they receive life jobs such as caretaker, birth mother, laborer, etc. Jonas is given the unique and crucial job of Keeper of memory. When the old Keeper gives Jonas his memories, Jonas realizes the world before his world where people held such feelings as love and happiness but also the pain of fear and hunger. He soon finds out that the "releasing" process is actually induced death and makes an escape from the community to search for a place outside his world. The end can be seen as a hopeful entrance into a new life or a release from a controlled life on one's own terms.

This is a good first book to present such complicated concepts as death, society, and individualism.