Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Scholastic press, 2008. Tr. $17.99, ISBN 978-0439023481.
What’s it about?
The corrupt Capitol of Panem hosts an annual televised fight to the death, and its participants are 24 children from surrounding districts. When Katniss Everdeen’s little sister Prim is one of the unlucky ones chosen in the annual lottery, Katniss volunteers to take her place, knowing she must out-wit and out-maneuver the game’s creators in order to survive.
Find out more:
Hunger Games takes place in an imagined future United States, known as Panem. The novel opens when the 74th annual Hunger Games are looming. Sixteen-year-old protagonist Katniss Everdeen of District 12 (the Appalachian region) is nervous about being reaped. If her name is drawn, she becomes one of 24 tributes, and must kill . . . or be killed. Only one tribute will survive, and the odds are against her. Wealthier districts train career tributes who usually win these televised Games. District 12 tributes are long shots. When Katniss’s little sister Prim’s name is drawn, Katniss volunteers to take her place. To her horror, the other tribute is a fellow student, Peeta, a baker’s son who gave her bread when her family was facing starvation. In order to survive, Katniss will have to kill him and 22 others—unless she is able to outwit the game’s creators with the help of her clever, self-destructive mentor Haymitch, who knows how to survive the Games.
The power of Hunger Games stays with the reader hours, days, weeks, months, and years after reading. This is the kind of book people keep re-reading. This is the kind of book that opens the mouths of normally reticent individuals, who eagerly tell strangers to devour this disquieting dystopian novel. The plot is wonderfully crafted, and the arena is horrifyingly imagined. The characters, particularly the main characters Katniss, Haymith and Peeta are extremely well-drawn, flawed and believable, as are many of the secondary characters such as Gale and Rue. Critics mention the similarities of Collins’s plot to other books and series, particularly Battle Royale, but Collins takes the premise of a corrupt, totalitarian government using citizens harming citizens to keep its people in line and creates a powerful work that strays far from the bloated, over-written Battle Royale. Collins’s world-building and writing skills were apparent from her earlier Overlander Chronicles, so it comes as little surprise that she would turn out such a masterful twist on the dystopian plot staple of individuals versus a corrupt government.
Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopian, Post-Apocalyptic, Survivalist/Adventure
Reading level: 5th grade
Interest level: Grades 6-12, adults
Subjects: Government Corruption, Reality Shows, Person vs. Society, Survival, Brutality
Awards:
Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year (2008)
New York Times Notable Children’s Book of 2008
Cybil Winner (2008)
On School Library Journal’s Best Books of 2008 list
Booklist Editor’s Choice (2008)
California Young Reader Medal (2011)
Read-alikes:
Grant’s Gone series
Ness’s Chaos Walking trilogy
Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It trilogy
Roth’s Divergent
Orwell’s 1984
Huxley’s Brave New World
Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451
Battle Royale (not recommended; very poor execution)
Series information:
Catching Fire (2009)
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