The Hunger Games Series

As a amature writer myself, I often think about what exactly it is that makes writing good.  When I read Suzanne Collins Hunger Games Series the answer came to me.  If the story continues into your dreams, you know the writing is good!  This is what happened to me: I transformed into Katniss Everdeen, the sixteen-year-old protective big sister, hunter, survivor...  I dodged fireballs, overcame dehydration, set snares and shot small game with my bow, nursed a friend back to life, said goodbye to another, etc. in my dreams.  For the two days that it took me to read the first book, I became Katniss. 

I don't know why it took me a couple of years to get on The Hunger Games bandwagon, but I'm glad I did.  Explaining this story without giving too much away is difficult, but I've narrowed the plot down to a combination of Goldings' Lord of the Flies, Jackson's"The Lottery," Paulson's The Hatchet, and Orwell's 1984.  But it also has a futuristic, fantasy feel to it similar to that in The Hobbit and Ender's Game.  Collins is a master at poetic lines.  I actually have highlighted many to use in class, especially her frequent uses of imagery, vivid verbs, amazing adjectives, participles, and appositives.  For example, on the first page of the novel, Collins uses simple words to create specific images: "Sitting at Prim's knees, guarding her, is the world's ugliest cat.  Mashed-in nose, half of one ear missing, eyes the color of rotting squash" (Collins 6).  And her ability to keep a reader interested was amazing.  Just when I neared the end of a chapter and was about to take a break, Collins through in one of her epic cliff hangers, and I was forced to read another chapter to find out what was happening to Katniss. 

A brief summary of the novel: Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place in the 74th annual Hunger Games, which is a television show where the world of Panem watches children fight each other to the death (as a sort of sacrifice for a civil war that happened previously).  One boy and one girl from each district are drawn to be tributes; therefore, there are twenty-four tributes placed in "the arena," and only one will make it out alive.  To see how Katniss out-smarts, out-hunts, out-survives the other tributes in this great adventure that lived on into my dreams. 

*To those who've seen the movie: Read the book! (books!) It is better than the movie!