Zach



About The Book:

=
Title- The Hunger Games. Author: Suzanne Collins. Published on September 14, 2008. Setting: A post-apocalyptical world called Panem where the totalitarian government controls the 12 districts through the Hunger Games. Situation: The main character, Katniss Everdeen, volunteers for the Hunger Games when her sister’s name is randomly chosen. In these Hunger Games a boy and a girl from each district, 24 in all, must fight to the death. Katniss is involved in the titanic struggle for life and death through much of the story. ======

About the Author: Suzanne Collins is an American television writer and novelist, best known for writing The Hunger Games series. She was born August 10, 1962 in HartfordConnecticut. She now lives in New town, Connecticut with her husband, 2 children and 2 cats. Her major works are the Hunger Games Trilogy and the Underland Chronicles. The Hunger Games received a number of awards. It was the 2009 winner of the Golden Duck Award in the Young Adult Fiction Category. The Hunger Games was also a "2008 Cybil Winner" for fantasy and science-fiction books. It is also one of School Library Journal's "Best Books 2008" and a "Booklist Editors' Choice" in 2008. In 2011, the book won the California Young Reader Medal. In the 2012 edition of Scholastic's Parent and Child magazine, The Hunger Games was listed as the 33rd best book for children, with the award for "Most Exciting Ending." Suzanne Collins is critically acclaimed as a writer, bringing five star ratings from such areas as the New York Times and USA Today literary criticism.

media type="youtube" key="FH15DI8ZW14" height="360" width="640"

Book Review:
 * The Hunger Games is a fast paced action book good for anyone in the preteen through young adult area. It has a little bit of everything for anyone, a love story, action, suspense and a surprise twist at the end. I would recommend to this for anyone looking for a read that can be read somewhat quickly, but is still in-depth and interesting. This book is a nice start into the dystopian post-apocalyptical genre that has become very prominent in today’s media. ||

Characters and Conflict:  The main conflict focuses in on Katniss Everdeen, a 16 year old girl from a future nation of Panem, where a brutal, to the death contest is held between a boy and a girl from each district ages 12-18 to control the populace. Katniss volunteers herself to basically her death to save her sister after she is chosen. She is taken along with a boy, Peeta Mellark, who Katniss knows from years before when he saved her life by purposely burning bread to give to her and her sta rving family. This soon evolves into the main focal point of the story, as Peeta reveals that he has in fact been in love with Katniss for many years, but she never knew. This plays into the unfolding of the events of the Games as well as into Katniss's psyche, as she has a very good friend back home named Gale, who she worries about and she also worries about his opinion on her and Peeta. media type="youtube" key="qoUT7q2iTbQ" height="360" width="640" Theme: The struggle for individuality in the extremity of the struggle for life and death shows in all people, because no one owns you, you are a human being.

Author's Style: Suzanne Collins has a very unique style within her preferred genre of writing, which is dystopian post-apocalypticworld now popular in the media and young adult writings. In the Hunger Games Collins uses fast paced, short choppy sentances for reading to keep readers who skim, a harrowing tone and diction and a cliffhanger typical to her genre.

1. In the Hunger Games, Collins uses a first person point of view. She does this to keep the reader in tune while she does her fast paced diction to keep the reader on the edge of their seat as readers now tend to skim through books, as put as "This new style seems to involve less description or 'the parts that people skip of skim", as James Patterson puts it, very intense and fast pacing,"(Bookstove). Even in descriptions of Katniss the main character she keeps it short and sweet to keep her readers, “I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.” (Collins, 121).

 2. Collins also uses very harrowing tones to keep readers with her style as this idea is central to her genre, "To thrill them, a story dosen't have to be unprecendented. It just has to be harrowing." (Miller). The "them" being the readers of this post-apocalypitic genre that Collins has immeresed herself into. She mainly uses this diction to describe times of extreme sorrow, danger or choices that Katniss must face, as in the books end when they are chased by genetically made dogs with the tributes DNA, "The blonde hair, the green eyes, the number…it’s Glimmer." (Collins, 333). This keeps readers who enjoy this harrowing tone that incorporates into her style.

<span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS',cursive; font-size: 150%;"> 3. Her final style note is to leave her readers with a cliffhanger at the end of her books to keep them coming back for more. "The books tend to end in cliffhangers that provoke their readers to post half-mocking protestations of agony." (Miller). This is seen repeatedly in Collins works, not just in the Hunger Games book, but the entire trilogy. Every book ends in a cliffhanger of emotions, even the final book when Collins promised that no other book would follow, it ends with the readers feeling that she stopped purposely to write another. But, this is her style.