Lois Lowry explains the origins of The Giver in this excerpt, taken from her 1993 Newbery Medal acceptance speech, given at the annual meeting of the American Library Association on June 26, 1994, in Miami, Florida.

"How do you know where to start?" a child asked me once, in a schoolroom where I'd been speaking to her class about the writing of books. I shrugged and smiled and told her that I just start wherever it feels right.

This evening it feels right to start by quoting a passage from The Giver a scene set during the days in which the boy, Jonas, is beginning to look more deeply into the life that has been very superficial, beginning to see that his own past goes back further than he had ever known and has greater implications than he had ever suspected.

Now he saw the familiar wide river beside the...