Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic, Inc., 384 pages
Copyright: 2010
VOYA Review:
Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen cannot believe it when her younger sister Prim is chosen as the female tribute from their district at the Reaping. In this futuristic society, each district is required to send two tributes to the Games in the Capitol where they must fight to the death while the whole country watches on live television. To protect her sister, Katniss volunteers to take her place, knowing that she will probably never again return home. Twenty-four young people are dropped off in a remote area and must fight for survival against the harsh conditions and each other. Only one is allowed to live. Katniss and Peeta, the other tribute from District 12, form an uneasy alliance that blossoms into romance amid the brutality and deprivation of the Hunger Games. Katniss and Peeta try to rebel against the Gamemakers but discover that they must play the game to its end. Collins moves up a level from the Gregor the Overlander books in this gripping story that is the first of a new trilogy. Themes of government control, "big brother," and personal independence are explored amidst a thrilling adventure that will appeal to science fiction, survival, and adventure readers. The suspense of this powerful novel will keep the reader glued to the page long after bedtime. Reviewer: Deborah L. Dubois
Review:
You mean, you can't just live and let live and survive? You need to be pretty AND strong AND brave AND clever? This is a gut-wrenchingly adventure packed novel, where the heroine, Katniss Evergreen, volunteers to be in the Hunger Games in order to save her sister from certain death and ultimately to help provide for her family who is on the brinks of starvation.
Imagine a place where the vast majority of resources are reserved for the use of a privileged group. A place where those who labor to create or harvest those resources - the miners who extract the coal, the field laborers who harvest the food, the factory workers who build the computers - live in abject poverty, unable to benefit from what they produce. Imagine that past rebellion against this state of affairs has been crushed by those privileged few, with their superior weapons, and military might. Imagine that these are a people who enjoy watching horrifically dehumanizing games, televised into their comfortable homes. It terrifies me to realize that it actually sounds like the world that we live in. Finally, imagine that this is a society in which children - always so vulnerable to the adults around them - are brutalized, given weapons and set loose in a hostile world - forced to fight and to kill, in order to stay alive.
The new world, where Katniss and her family lives, is called Panem, with the center, the Capitol, ruling 12 districts that each supply their different products: electronics, coal, agricultural goods, etc. In the not so distant past, there had been a civil war, a rebellion by the districts ending in vigorous and complete squashing of District 12. As a reminder of the sin of rebellion, every year the Capitol chooses 2 children from each district, between the ages of 12 and 18, to fight in the Hunger Games. They fight to the death, until there is one child left standing. The whole event is televised. When Katniss's 12 year old sister, Prim, is chosen, Katniss volunteers to take her place in the games. Katniss is whisked away to Capitol City where she is to prepare for the games. This include, interviews, training scores, and hopefully appealing to and attaining sponsors who will provide her with supplies that she will need to survive. That's where pretty counts when it comes to survival. She is pampered, styled, interviewed, and eventually dropped off in the middle of a wilderness arena where she competes to live.
This is about as dark a dystopia as most of those created.It is essentially about kids killing kids in a reality television show that everyone in the country is forced to watch. Parents are forced to watch their child being brutally attacked with a spear. Siblings are forced to watch their brother or sister starve to death.
I was intensely involved in Collins's work, yet I couldn't help to be dumbfounded by the plot of the story. Collins' story isn't just a powerful, thought-provoking allegory, after all, but an intensely exciting adventure story. It is also a fatalistic view of the world a hundred or so years from now, or a thousand, or a million. The idea of teens killing each other for the entertainment of the ruling classes is repulsive yet captivating -- you can't help turning the pages faster to see who will survive. Katniss is a compelling heroine -- resourceful, righteous, and genuinely conflicted about the moral implications of some of the difficult decisions she has to make in order to survive. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.
Reading Level: Intermediate
Recommended audience: For older teens, ages 16/17 and up.
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