Gossamer by Lois Lowry
Where do dreams come from? What stealthy nighttime messengers are the guardians of our most deeply hidden hopes and our half-forgotten fears? Drawing on her rich imagination, two-time Newbery winner Lois Lowry confronts these questions and explores the conflicts between the gentle bits and pieces of the past that come to life in dream, and the darker horrors that find their form in nightmare. In a haunting story that tiptoes between reality and imagination, two people—a lonely, sensitive woman and a damaged, angry boy—face their own histories and discover what they can be to one another, renewed by the strength that comes from a tiny, caring creature they will never see.
I found a couple of reviews that I really liked about the book:
There are dream-givers, who haunt our homes each night, collecting scraps of memories from our belongings and then bestowing them on us as dreams. There are Sinisteeds, who are former dream givers turned dark, who inflict nightmares, and sometimes attack in Hordes.
And there is an angry boy, taken from an abusive home and placed in foster care with a lonely old woman. The old woman needs the strength to help the boy, his mother needs to pull her life together to get him back, and the boy has become the focus of a Horde. The only help available to any of them are a very young dream-giver-in-training and her elderly mentor.
Without a doubt, Lois Lowry’s books stand out when compared with some of the other fare on contemporary bookshelves — and thankfully Lowry has been recognized for it. In 1990, she won her first Newbery Medal for NUMBER THE STARS, a fictionalized account based on the true story of how a group of Christians in Denmark saved their Jewish neighbors from persecution during World War II. She received her second Newbery Medal in 1994 for THE GIVER, probably her most well-known book to date. Now comes another book that is so beautifully written and so poignant in message that its sure-to-be glowing reception just might give new meaning to the expression “three time’s the charm.”
GOSSAMER tells the story of a group of mythical creatures (for lack of a better expression to describe them) who are responsible for the creation and distribution of dreams. After being assigned to various households by their leader, Most Ancient, the creatures settle into their roles as dreamweavers by acquainting themselves with objects in the house (photographs, articles of clothing, trinkets on a bureau) that contain significance and memories of the owners. After they have gathered enough meaningful fragments, the dream-givers combine them to create a story, or dream, to bestow onto the sleeping inhabitants. This process is, in fact, how dreams are born.
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Lowry’s latest offering is simply magical. It is clear that she has taken great care to write a narrative that will both teach and touch its readers. A book full of gentle spirit and pure beauty, GOSSAMER is definitely award-winning material.
It is a 2008 Maud Hart Lovelace Award Nominated book.
