Book Review - The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is the first book in the Mockingjay Trilogy which follows the story of Katniss Everdeen as she attempts to survive in the post-apocalyptic world of Panem.  Panem is the remains of a war torn North America and is separated into twelve districts and the Capitol.  It experiences class and wealth divides with the Captiol having a extreme wealth and plenty of resources, while many of the districts surviving on little.  Approximately 100 years ago a war was fought over this set up.  This civil war resulted in District 13 being "obliterated" and the yearly gladitorial Hunger Games where two children of each district fight.  Katniss volunteers to take the place of her younger sister and immediately becomes a figure of interest in the year's Hunger Games.  Her attempts to survive and save the lives of other children in the games leads to political instability which becomes the major plot points of Catching Fire and Mockingjay.

I devoured the Mockingjay series in about a week.  The writing is good, most of the characters are well developed, and the themes, sometimes shown only by small details, are deep and relevent.  They are also rather adult.  This book is considered Young Adult, but I think part of that classification comes from the ages of the characters.  Katniss starts the series as the age of 16. 

However the book portays the brutal death of multiple children and teenagers.  It also deals with PTSD, alcohol and drug addiction and contains multiple cultural critiques such as classism, racism, and an entertainment obsessed culture.  It's incredibly deep. 

While I think teenagers can read and appreciate The Hunger Games and the rest of the trilogy I think they have to be emotionally mature to do so.  A twelve-year-old might understand the words and follow the story, but this series is more on the sixteen-year-old end of the YA classification. 

This is certainly a series that leads to discussion.  It's great for a book club or for parents and teens to read and discuss together.  This is also a way for younger teens to read the book and gain understanding of the more mature themes in the book.

As a YA book The Hunger Games is for Self Extending Readers and ones at the higher end of the level.  Readers definately need some background knowledge on Roman history and the geography of North America to understand the layout of Panem and the significance of gladitorial games.  To catch the classism and racism that is portrayed readers obviously need to have some understanding of these issues and how the manifest in small ways.  Even then some readers are likely to miss that the poorer discricts and people are more likely to have darker coloring as this is something that Collins portrays through character descriptions, but doesn't explain the significance of.

As a side note there is a movie of The Hunger Games and I imagine it will be very popular.  It will still be some time before the film comes out.  I'm always in favor of reading a book before seeing the film and I think it's good to see how the different mediums seek to tell the same story. The Hunger Games will be especially interesting in this regard as Suzanne Collins is helping to write the script.