When students offer me suggestions for books it is hard to tell even from their noticeable personalities what sort of book I might be getting. The things you do not know about young people as a teacher and their hobbies outside of school are staggering and this is coming from someone who makes a daily concerted effort to learn as much about my students as possible so that I may be able to teach them in a manner more effective towards their learning styles and their interests.
So when one young man came up to me with this book, after having finished its 374 pages in two days I figured it must be 1) a perfect match for him content wise yet maybe a bit simple reading level wise (since he completed it so quickly and 2) hilarious (since he tends to be and so does his writing). 'The Hunger Games' most definitely is a fast read yet it is far from hilarious.
The disturbing premise isn't all that new, folks are chosen to compete against each other to the death in an arena for the masses to gawk at. Only here it has to be children and it has to be watched, by law, by everyone. So when law-breaking pseudo-rebel Katniss' little sister is chosen for the Hunger Games she volunteers to take her place (one of the few rules of the Games which is controlled by the contestants). The only catch, out of the twenty four contestants who enter, only one survives the battleground and goes on to fame and fortune.
Collins, a one time children's television writer knows a good story and she knows how to allude to other good stories that children should (or eventually will know - star crossed lovers anyone....?) She knows how to build characters and she knows how to create a realistic setting. The only thing she seems to be missing on occasion is the description of emotion.
Clearly, I've never been trapped in an arena with twenty-three folks who want to murder me to save their own lives but I figure if I was, or if anyone was who wasn't trained to be (such as the career tributes in the book) we might be freaking out a little bit. Not only does Katniss not freak out, very few, if any characters seem anything but overly keen to their own actions. For a bunch of teenagers this smart, we should be having them skip a grade, not life entirely.
A very fast read, almost entirely entertaining sans the end (I love surprises but not the kind where you have to wait God knows how long for it...) I would highly recommend this to anyone who things the premise sounds good or to any middle school reader who is either struggling with interest in the books they are being given or the vocabulary of what they are reading.