Review: THE HUNGER GAMES (Book 1 of the trilogy) | Suzanne Collins

TITLE: The Hunger Games

AUTHOR: Suzanne Collins

PUBLISHER: Scholastic, Inc.

DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2008

PAGES: 374

GRADE LEVEL(S): 7-8

RELEVANT CURRICULA: English Language Arts

CLASSROOM USES: Class reading, Literature Circles

BRIDGE TEXTS: The Giver, What Is The What?, Fahrenheit 451

NB: This review is based on the text of Book 1 of The Hunger Games Trilogy. Later reviews will cover the remainder of the series.

Adolescence is marked by struggling to find the line between right and wrong, between making choices and following directions. Every day of his life, every middle school students feels that his free will has been undermined, that he has suffered some injustice. It is the condition of being an adolescent.

What student hasn’t felt trapped—either at home, at school, or both? What student hasn’t felt that she has been wrongly vilified due to some arbitrary decision made by an authority figure? What student hasn’t attempted to elude the watchful eye of a parent, teacher, or administrator, hasn’t broken some rule in order to achieve something that she knows just has to be done. And what student hasn’t felt, at one time or another, that she has been pitted against her peers for no good reason? 

The Hunger Games attacks all of these adolescent struggles in a fast-paced story that teaches strong lessons, but never feels didactic.

The story is set in an almost post-Apocalyptic version of North America called Panem, in which the main role of government is to suppress any sort of uprising of the micro-communities under its control. Each “District” is self-contained, except for once a year, when one boy and one girl from each locality are sent to the capital for a televised fight to the death. The “tributes,” as they are called, are to serve as reminders of the complete control that the central government has over its citizens.

Katniss Everdeen—the book’s heroine and narrator—has fought to survive for most of her life, but never on the level that she will when she is sent as a tribute in the Hunger Games. She faces the very same issues that every student faces in their own lives—feeling trapped, victimized, forced to break the rules—but on a scale they can only imagine.

Parents have protested the inclusion of the Hunger Games Trilogy as required reading in their children’s school’s curricula, and there are legitimate questions to be raised about the content. The Hunger Games does not portray adults—particularly those in positions of authority—in a favorable light. Events of the book are sometimes violent, and almost always hard to fathom.

Ultimately, however, The Hunger Games provides teachers and parents to broach difficult issues. Moral issues abound in this novel, but even for those who want schools to avoid as much as possible the teaching of moral issues, this book cannot be ignored. Students will relate to Katniss and her plight, and The Hunger Games is a wonderful tool to get students to think about big questions. Keep it out of schools, and—don’t look now, but—you’ll be putting the same kind of restraints against students and teachers as the rule-makers in Panem’s capital city put on their districts.

Why YA

I’ve always been a big reader. My mom took us to storytime at the library and made sure that we got library cards and could check out our own books. She likes to read and I would see her with huge books and I think that passed on to me. I remember going to the library as a child and the teen section was a single cart of books. Luckily, by the time I was a teen the library had a brand new building with a separate teen section. Libraries on Long Island were generally well supported and the teen section was a decent size with its very own librarian.

Nancy Gorman was the YA librarian at the Longwood Public Library and responsible for stocking those shelves. Back then we didn’t have the internet, let alone book blogs and twitter, so teen access to books was limited to those at the library or the bookstore. We relied on the librarians to buy good books because we weren’t hearing about them any other way. Mrs. Gorman did a good job of selecting books and having fun programs for teens to get us in the library so we could find those books. When I eventually started working at the library (at 16) I knew that I wanted to be Mrs. Gorman—I wanted to be a YA librarian and bring teens and books together.

I’ve read mostly YA books ever since. The few grownup books I read as a teen/young adult were all cross-over books—adult books that have large teen appeal. Anne Rice’s vampire series and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy were the extent of my adult book reading experience. I went to library school, got a job as a YA librarian and did that for seven years, reading YA as part of the job to better serve my population. I started my book blog in 2004 and at the time there were only a handful of other blogs about YA books. When my second child was born I switched to part time work and believing that teens deserved a full time librarian, I gave up that aspect of my job.

But I never stopped reading YA.

I’ve read a few grown up books since then as part of a book club with my friends, but I still focus on YA. I could have stopped since it was no longer part of my job, but I noticed something interesting after I became a parent, I could easily read a teen book about horrifying topics—rape, murder, abuse, etc—and while it wasn’t a great pick-me-up, it was okay. But if I read a grown up book on those same topics, I instantly had the point of view of the parent in the story and I couldn’t read it. I would much rather read the teen’s point of view than the parent’s. When I read a YA book I’m just a reader, but when I read a grownup book I can’t help but bring myself and my children into it. If Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) had been an adult book told from the point of view of the mother in the story there is no way I could have read and enjoyed it. But luckily it’s a teen book.

I also happen to think that most grown up books are a bit boring. YA books—even the bleakest ones—are generally full of hope. Teens have their futures ahead of them. I like the stories they have to tell. YA books are exciting and adventurous, dramatic and emotional. Most of them are well-written and engaging in ways that grownup books just aren’t for me. Like the teens they are written for, YA books are full of potential and promise. They stay with you long after you’ve read them.

After the birth of my third child I stopped working at the library completely. But I still keep my hand in YA literature. I review all the books I read on my book blog (http://goddesslibrarian.blogspot.com) and I also write about YA fiction for the examiner (http://www.examiner.com/young-adult-fiction-in-albany/jennifer-mcintosh). When I’m done having children and they’ve all found their way to school I hope to find other ways to bring teens and books together.

- Jennifer McIntosh

Review: WHEN YOU REACH ME | Rebecca Stead

TITLE: When You Reach Me
AUTHOR: Rebecca Stead
PUBLISHER: Wally Lamb Books
DATE OF PUBLICATION: 2009
PAGES: 208
GRADE LEVEL(S): 5-7
RELEVANT CURRICULA: English
CLASSROOM USES: Required reading, Summer/Independent reading, Literature Circles
BRIDGE TEXTS: A Wrinkle In Time


The first time I wrote anything--in fact, the only time I wrote anything--about When You Reach Me, I could hardly think of words to do the book justice. I quoted from commentary from Nancy Pearl on NPR (which was how I first learned about the book), and then wrote:

When You Reach Me is a wonderful descendant of Madeline L'Engle's A Wrinkle In Time; it never once even comes close to imitation, or cheap knock-offery.  No, it's the classiest of descendants--it's an evolution.

One of the most beautiful aspects of fantasy is how completely it takes the reader from her/his own world into that of the novel. What better way for students to learn first-hand of the magic of literature than by being transported to the planet Uriel? Or to Narnia? Or Middle-earth? Or Oz?


But Stead's novel takes place in New York City. (No doubt, NYC can be magical and unreal, but it's no outer space...) Miranda, Stead's protagonist, is a relatively normal girl, living in a relatively normal world, with the everyday drama that inhabits the world of every 11 year-old. 


The fantastical elements of When You Reach Me are subtler than magic or space travel. Stead's fantasy world is more mysterious than magical, as Miranda receives unexplained notes about events yet-to-happen in her life. Miranda is understandably skeptical; this could as easily be a prank as it is magic, and neither Miranda nor the reader has to take a huge leap of faith to feel that life is carrying on more or less as usual.


This fantasy-based-in-realism approach is sheer brilliance. By staying firmly rooted in real-world places and problems, Stead's novel will appeal to students who may already possess a bit of world-weary reluctance to get fully sucked into a novel. Any reader unwilling to blast into outer space will slowly but surely get sucked in by the bully on the block or the struggles of growing up with a single parent. But magic will just seep in, slowly but surely--and before long, When You Reach Me will make readers out of kids today in the same way that A Wrinkle In Time made readers of them in 1962.

Welcome to TeachYALit.com - The YA Lit Review!

Greetings and welcome!

At the moment, this website is just a kernel of an idea. It's an offshoot of my current reading/writing/book review blog, which can be found here.

While I include YA Lit on my other blog, I wanted to create a different vehicle that would focus exclusively on young adult literature. I'd like this site to serve several different purposes:

• Be a resource for teachers/educators who want to find and share great ideas for books to include in classroom libraries, bridge texts to canonical literature, or any other lesson/unit plans that would benefit from the inclusion of great YA lit.
• Be a resource for students who devour books faster than the publishers can print them, can't find a book worth reading that feels real and relevant, or need suggestions for books to read for school projects, book reports, or just plain pleasure
• Be a resource for parents who want to read with their kids, steer their children towards some great books, or relive their own middle and high school glory days by reading books for teens.
• And, of course, I hope the format and content of this site proves to be useful and welcoming to anyone who has an interest in young adult literature.

The primary content for a while will focus on reviews and commentary on individual books, authors, or series. For now, this site is hosted by blogger, and it will likely stay that way for the early part of its life, while we let it evolve and adjust to the type/amount of traffic it generates. In the not-too-distant future, however, I anticipate migrating this to a larger and more flexible hosting service in order to add features and functionality. Possible additions include a wiki for lesson/unit planning, file storage for media and other ancillary materials, and user forums to promote more flexibility in organizing and contributing to discussions.

As a former teacher and administrator in both middle and high school settings, I have a huge collection of YA lit in my own personal library, so I have a pretty large backlog of books to review here. I'll start posting those immediately, but in the meantime, please comment with suggestions for books to include, lesson/unit topics, or anything else that seems relevant! Guest posts are most heartily welcome; if interested, you can email me here.