I read the Giver a few years back, but I remember it fairly well. 

I think it an excellent book--perhaps even one of the Greats-- and, like most sci-fi and literature like to sci-fi, it makes a series of remarkably good points and accurate predictions. 

The "Releasing" tradition is so sick. The young and the old are not considered people. They are disposed of without qualm or scruple-- whole generations of voices silenced, and nobody notices or even cares. It struck me like an electrical shock when I first read it-- and now I look around and see that reality isn't far distant from that horror..

Authors don't need crystal balls or magic numbers to fortell our future-- the book of mankind throbs with perpetual, ever-present flash-backs. The dead past rises time and again to haunt us. Perhaps we should all take our history education a little more seriously-- the present, and even the future, makes a lot more sense when seen through the eyes of days gone by.