The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1)

by Suzanne Collins

[Charli G.]

The country they live in is separated into Districts – and each year, each District must provide one young man and one young woman to participate in a cruel display of the government’s power over the Districts called The Hunger Games. It is violent. It shows a blatant lack of care, by the government, for the family and life itself. It shows nothing but the tyranny of a government. Sound like an interesting concept? It is – and because of that interesting concept, this book – this series of books – has been challenged and/or banned by libraries.

When you meet Katniss Everdeen, you may not think much of her. I know I didn’t. I didn’t think much of what would be the heroine of this story. That changed as I saw how she interacted with her little sister and how she reacted during the process of selecting the “tributes” for The Hunger Games. At that point I started to see what kind of person Katniss Everdeen is.

The world she lives in is a world where she has nothing – her neighbors work in coal mines. Everything is more or less backwards. They have televisions and telephones as we do, but cellular devices and computers do not exist in District 12, or least they are not mentioned much if they have them. The Capitol has hovercraft and computers, etc., but keeps these things away from the Districts as much as possible. Oh, and let us not forget the barbaric manner in which The Capitol keeps control of the citizens.

The Hunger Games paints a grim picture of what actually could happen in our world. It is not a far stretch to imagine an uprising against a government that the North American people are not satisfied with. It is not a far reach to imagine a tyrant coming to power – a tyrant with a sick and twisted imagination that would pit the people’s children against each other in a fight to the death. I think that is what both makes this book so good and makes people want to challenge this book and see it banned.

I have to admit, this book took me less than 24 hours to read from start to finish. This was probably helped along by the fact that when reading it, I was on a bus trip from Iowa to Colorado, and needed something to do on the bus. But I had other books with me, and frankly, I never once considered switching books. I simply felt no need to switch books – I couldn’t get enough of the book. I honestly couldn’t get enough of it.