Gossamer

By Lois Lowry

Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 2006

Nobody creates a world quite like Lois Lowry. From the opening scene of Gossamer, Lowry paints a vivid picture of a world not completely unlike ours, in which small, mysterious beings gather memories from the items in our home and then bestow them upon as dreams.  In this story, these dream givers play a crucial role in the lives of a lonely older woman and the troubled young boy she agrees to take in.  Without the help of Littlest One and Thin Elderly, the humans are in danger of suffering at the hands of the "Sinisteeds," those who bring not dreams, but nightmares.

The beginning of this story was simultaneously intriguing and frustrating.  Lowry develops her main characters for several chapters without actually telling the reader who (or what) they are.  Her tactic is very interesting:  she actually has her main character, Littlest One, questioning another character about what she is.  She says, "are we a kind of dog?" (p. 2), "might we be a type of bat?" (p. 5), and later, "might we be human?" (p. 6).  Each time, this question is preceded by some small detail about the beings, such as the fact that they have shadows, but not tails, and not wings.  In this manner, Lowry forces her reader to continually adjust her mental picture of these beings.  What are they?  Why are they there?  What is their purpose?  Although in the end I found this process helpful and even rewarding, in the midst of it I felt like she was going too far.  However, I am reading from a completely different perspective:  I have had practice reading and picturing stories for most of my life, whereas young children might need this coaxing to develop their internal "artist" for reading, picturing, and comprehending fictional texts.

The narrative with the dream givers is woven in between the stories of two humans.  The first is an elderly woman who, based on the "fragments" Littlest One gives her for dreams, has outlived her friends and family, and now lives happily, if somewhat lonely, with her dog, Toby.  The second is a young boy, 8 years old, who has been put into her hands until his mother can get back on her feet.  John is struggling with the heavy burden of understanding that his father was physically and mentally abusive to both him and his mother; throughout the story, Lowry gives more and more details to help the reader see the sad pattern his life had contained before his father "moved to California," as his 8-year-old mind understands it.  To make matters worse, the Sinisteeds are targeting the vulnerable little boy, and Littlest One must do everything she can to protect him so he can resist the terror of his nightmares.

Gossamer deals with some very tough issues.  The physical abuse of little John is explicit in the text, especially towards the end, where he tells the woman that his father punished him for wetting himself when he was three by treating him as though he were a dog.  The language is powerful and moving, and I was saddened by the descriptions of the little boy's feelings of guilt.  However, Lowry does end her note on an uplifting note:  John is starting school, his mother has a good, steady job and a supportive group of friends, and Littlest One begins to train her own dream giver, now that she has matured enough to understand the art.

I love Lois Lowry's style of writing, but I had some trouble with this book.  It is more abstract than some of her other books, and the climactic battle literally takes place in a dream world, which makes it hard to grasp.  That being said, I enjoyed learning the histories of the boy and the woman, and the idea of tiny creatures who choose what you dream about and protect you from nightmares is actually kind of comforting.  I think this would be a great read aloud because Lowry really exercises the reader's ability to form mental pictures, and uses vocabulary that is fairly advanced.  Finally, the story ends on an uplifting note, suggesting the resiliency of children and the importance of imagination and dreams.

For more information on Lois Lowry, including a list of her books and speeches, you can visit her website!