Why 'The Giver' Movie Will Disappoint the Book's Fans

The Daily Beast

Few books are as cherished as Lois Lowry’s modern classic, and the movie’s changes may be too much for fans to forgive. Here’s what's different. (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

In an age when film rights to young adult novels—particularly those centered around strong-willed children in a bleak dystopia—are optioned before a book ever even hits a shelf, it’s astounding that what is one of the most important, most popular, most cherished works of that kind from the past three decades took almost 20 years to hit the screen.

But maybe that’s because adapting The Giver into a film was always a fool’s errand.

In the course of two decades, Lois Lowry’s 1994 Newberry Medal-winning novel has sold nearly 12 million copies and become a classroom staple, the rare book that almost every American student was forced to read at a point in their lives and actually enjoyed reading.

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