The Hunger Games

Author: Suzanne Collins
Genre: Fantasy

1 Star

What was once North America is now Panem, the Capitol, with twelve outlying districts.  The Capitol has decided to keep the districts in line by forcing each one to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.  When Katniss Everdeen's younger sister is chosen to participate, she offers to go in her stead.

Okay, I know there are people out there who really like this book (and I mean really like this book) and are going to disagree with me on this one (again, no getting nasty, it's just my opinion here).  But I honestly don't know how this could be good for kids to read.  And this is why I gave it one star only:  It's violent, unrealistic (what parent would let a society send their children out to be killed?), and badly written. 

Alas, It's a pretty dark book listed for kids to read.  And it's about kids.  I don't find this 'great' or 'entertaining'.  Yes, I know it's a book, but there's nothing 'entertaining' about kids being sent to their deaths.  In fact, that's rather sick.  And I'm not giving away any spoilers here, since I figure anyone who's going to read it already has, given all the hype and the movie.

But there are questions:  I don't think it's plausible that people who supposedly love their children would allow this to go on year after year.  If you knew your kids were going to be sent to their death (or there was even a chance), then why would you have kids at all?  What kind of a person does that make you?  Why didn't the 'districts' rise up against the Capitol and win?  Surely there were more people everywhere else than this one area? Why couldn't they overthrow them?  Small nations  overthrow governments all the time.  It didn't make any sense and is something worth thinking about.....

www.amazon.com/Hunger-Games-Book-1/dp/0439023521