The Hunger Games - By Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic, Inc. 2008) is a fictional story where the capital rules the people and children are sent into the wilderness to kill or be killed. It is a young adult book with a readability lexile of grade 7 and up.

The country is divided by districts and the people in the districts are very restricted. They only know what the government wants them to know about what is happening outside of their district. Every year, the capital (government) hosts a mandatory game. Two children (ages 12 to 18) of each of the 12 districts are chosen at random to fight in the hunger games. There is only one winner of the game and the only way to win is to survive while all other people are killed. The games are shown on television like a reality television show and all the people are forced to watch the entire event. Before the show, the contestants are dressed up, given advice about how to look worthy of winning, and paraded around the city. No one is allowed to act upset with or say anything negative, against the capital.

The hero in the story is Katniss, a spunky girl that is a good hunter and and fiercely protective over her younger sister. The other person chosen from her district (12) is a young man that has loved Katniss for a long time. His love for her is real, and she is forced to act like she feels the love also for the audience. It seems as though it turns real through the story, but isn't exactly settled by the end of the book.

The capital sets traps and sends danger if they get bored with the story. They control the weather and the elements. If a tribute (contestant) is shown to be worthy, he/she may be given a present from their sponsors or their district.

It is a story of survival that seems like a combination of 1984 (George Orwell), The Running Man (Stephen King), Surviving the Game (movie), and the reality television show, Survivor. It is a good read and brings up many moral questions. Is this a good book for children to be reading? Even though it brings to life this negative utopia that can provoke deep thought and morality, I don't know that children would fully understand the message being conveyed. The children in the story don't question killing each other. At one point, the male protagonist in the story says he wants to show the capital that he isn't a tool in their terrible game and that people shouldn't be treated this way. It was a short conversation and not brought up again. Katniss doesn't go out of her way to kill the others, but she does kill. I imagine that young people reading the story view it as an exciting love story. It could provoke some interesting discussions of politics and morality.

It is a good story that is very popular with young adults. It is a hard book to put down. The author does a wonderful job of taking the readers into the characters' world. It was a survival, love story. The way that Katniss grew was that she started to realize her love for the male characters. They were trapped in a pretty terrible world, but she may now have a chance to make things better. We will have to find out in the next book.

Literary Elements:
Foreshadowing - Talk of the event and the chances that Katniss or her sister be chosen was a clue to the events that followed.
Allusion - The story alluded to the gladiator games, as well as the television show, survivor.


Mini-lesson:
I'm not sure that this would be a good book to choose to assign to the students. There are other books out there that I would choose over this one. However, if it was assigned, I would want to have the students explore the political aspect of the book. The students could write the rules and values of the government in the story compared with the rules and values of our country. In groups, they could make a compare and contrast list, a poster, paper, imovie: whatever medium they wanted to use to represent and discuss the differences.