Young Adult novel is gripping to the end
Erin Livingston, Special to the Gazette
Friday, March 20, 2009
“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic Press, 2008, $17.99.
By Erin Livingston
Special to The Gazette
“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins is an excellent, fast-paced, intense and intriguing read. I couldn’t put it down, and literally finished it in a day.
A friend recommended it to me — and I’m glad she did. The twists in the plot were fantastic — most of them I didn’t see coming (which is usually a rarity in a young adult book), and those that I did see played out differently in the end than I suspected they would. I hung onto the author’s words to the very last page; twist and turns occur in the plot right up to the very end.
The overall plot concerns Katniss Everdeen, who lives in what used to be North America. The area is now divided into a set of 12 districts and a central area called the Capitol.
Each year, the Capitol requires each district to randomly select and send a boy and a girl contestant between the ages of 12 and 18 to participate in the Hunger Games — a brutish free-for-all contest where contestants must battle each other and where the last person living wins. The games are constantly filmed by secret cameras and shown to everyone in the Capitol and in each district. It’s like a reality show pushed to a whole new level.
When Katniss’s younger sister, Prim, has her name drawn for the Hunger Games, Katniss volunteers to take her place. Katniss and the other contestants must use their wits to outlast one another and fight to the death, but complications occur for Katniss.
Although Katniss is a skilled hunter, (she has spent many years in the nearby woods, poaching with her best friend, Gale, to feed both their families), she has doubts as to whether she will be able to kill other contestants — especially the boy drawn from her district, Peeta. Katniss is determined to survive to the end of the contest, though she’s not sure exactly how to achieve this goal.
I think both boys and girls will enjoy this riveting book, and that teens and adults alike will be drawn to it. Younger teens might find the concepts disturbing (like the fact that only one of the contestants is allowed to survive), but older readers will find that this stipulation only adds to the suspense of the plot. The language in the book is not complicated, and Collins has a style that is very accessible to most readers. Again, this book is an excellent read, and one that I would definitely recommend.
“The Hunger Games” is the first in a trilogy. The second book, “Catching Fire,” is scheduled to be published Sept. 1.
On the Shelf is written by staff and volunteers of the Emporia Public Library.