The Hunger Games

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. Hunger Games Trilogy. 1. New York: Scholastic Press, 2008.
[Book cover credit: librarything.com/work/4979986]

Awards:
Cybils Award - Fantasy and Science Fiction, Young Adult (2008)
A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book (2008)
Locus Recommended Reading, Young Adult (2008)
ALA Best Books for Young Adults (2009)
Amelia Bloomer List (2009)

Booktalk:
RAW is pretty awesome, and UFC is pretty hard core. Both look like tickling competitions compared to The Hunger Games: twelve boys and twelve girls, all 12-18 years old, thrown together to see who can live the longest, ie kill everyone else off. Actually kill them, none of this "no rules but play fair" crap that they pull in other extreme fighting arenas. Sounds cool, right? Well, it would be if The Hunger Games was played by a bunch of rich jerks with too much testosterone who train for it their whole lives. Those guys are there, of course, but other kids are picked at random to participate too. Kids like Katniss's sweet, barely twelve years old little sister, Prim. When Prim is selected, Katniss goes against all reason and volunteers to go in her place. With nothing but the desperate desire to survive, Katniss is going to play in the most important game of her life, The Hunger Games.

Review:
Seeing as how I'm the last person on the planet to read The Hunger Games, except for my mom who tried to steal my copy while I was home visiting last week, I don't feel like my review needs to be all that in depth.

This book rocks. Read it.

But if you take the dust jackets off books to read them like I do, don't read it on the beach or your beach buddy will get a really funky sunburn from the reflection of the gold mockingjay on the cover...