Book Review – The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (Scholastic) ISBN: 9780439023481

The Hunger Games is a Young Adult Dystopian novel. Imagine a destroyed world. Imagine Ancient Rome. Imagine The Colosseum.

Katniss Everdeen is 16. She lives somewhere in the future in District 12 of Panem. The Capitol of Panem cruelly controls the half-starved population with food rations and ‘peacekeepers’.

Every year, each of the 12 districts must send ‘tributes’ to compete in The Hunger Games. The tributes are children from 12 – 18, their names drawn in public at the ‘reaping’. The tributes get to compete in the biggest show on Earth. A girl and a boy from each district are styled, coached and thrown into an arena. The games are sponsored, and televised 24 hours a day.

The catch? Only one of the 24 comes out alive. The contestants have to kill each other. Horrifying, and yet familiar, Suzanne Collins has written an extraordinary novel. Using reality television, Collins holds up humanity’s future, its present and its past. Would you watch these games? Be honest.

Katniss is so human, so imperfect and so perfect for the role she never wanted. Selfish, brave, and pure, she becomes the Capitol’s worst nightmare. Read this book. It’s worth every page.