After finishing this tonight I realize that these books may be best when read back-to-back, which isn't hard to do since they're so short. I know that wasn't the intention--Lowry wrote them years apart; but the emotional impact and full circle story work so well when they're read together. 
 That said, and without giving anything away, this is a wonderful cap to a great series. The characters are familiar, yet new, and they still have much to learn. As do we, both as readers as well as citizens in a society that Lowry shows us time and time again as fractured and false because of the people who make it so.