The Hunger Games-- Foxface, Rue, & Tresh

Dande:
What about the little girl, Rue? And how she died, and Katniss sang the song, what did you think of that?

Jolly:
That was really sweet but it was kind of boring.

Smiley:

Who thinks that she likes Rue more than Prim?

Dande:
I think she was a substitute.

Newhope:
You know something's up if it's considered an act of rebellion to put flowers on a dead girl.

Laughs

Chair:
Well doing that kind of takes away from the whole bloody massacre thing.

Newhope:
Yeah, but that really foreshadows, wow, that situation's not going to last forever.

* * *

Dande:
What do you think of the bombs and everything?

Jolly:
That was funny!

Newhope:
The landmines? That just added more tension to the entire beginning. I guess it was pretty funny.

Jolly:
How the kid redid them, around the food? That kid was awesome!

O'Juice:
But then he died.

Smiley:

That brings us to Foxface. What did you think of her?

Jolly:
Her death was hilarious.

O'Juice:
Yeah, like she's all so cunning, and then she dies because she's an idiot.

Chair:
"There goes the smartest person in these Games! Oh, wait..."

Dande:
I thought she would be a lot harder. I didn't think the big Hulky guy would be the last person standing, I thought it would be her, I thought she'd be trying to outwit them at the end.

Newhope:

Exactly.

Jolly:
I thought they'd end up fighting Rue at the end. Before they teamed up with Rue, I thought she would be at the end, because she's so small and cunning.

Chair:
Well, Katniss kind of mentions that in the beginning. She says, "Maybe someone else will kill her, so I don't have to."

Jolly:
That's why I wouldn't want to team up with the person from my District, until they announced the new rule, because I'd half to kill them off later anyway.

* * *

Chair:
I didn't like that Tresh didn't get an actual death, they just mentioned, "Oh, look, he's dead!" Didn't he just save your life ten minutes ago?

Newhope:
It was a really convenient way of getting rid of him without going any deeper.

Jolly:
They just knock people off and you half to assume that's what happened. For all we know, he ate the poisonous berries that Foxface ate.

Laughs

Dande:
Didn't they say that the people got him in the fields though?

Newhope:
Yeah, but I think it would be pretty hard to find him in the fields.

Walle:
And he's used to the fields, because he works there, so I don't think he should have died there.

The Hunger Games-- Tracker Jackers, Forest & the Pin

Dande:
Tracker jackers!

O'Juice:
They track you down and they jack you.

Laughs.

* * *

Dande:
I didn't expect them to have a boring forest. They talked about deserts, and arctic wastelands, and they had a forest?

Newhope:
Yeah, that's way too convenient.

O'Juice:
I hate how it was so perfect to her.

Chair:
Well they needed a forest because otherwise Katniss wouldn't be able to do anything.

Dande:
And also Rue couldn't be a squirrel and jump through trees.

Newhope:
She'd be dead in the first field.

* * *

Jolly:
I don't get about the pin. What's the big deal about the pin? I mean sure, it's the token she takes, but... she barely knew Madge.

O'Juice:
It's symbolism.

Chair:
It's more of a connection with Rue, because Rue explains what the bird was. And they were going to give it to Rue, but then Rue didn't want it, she gave it back.

Dande:
I think they just needed something awesome to put on the cover.

Newhope:

I thought this symbol of the front cover to be the symbol of the resistance, and it never happened.

Jolly:
I expected that to be the symbol of the Capitol, but I had no idea what it meant before she got the pin.

The Hunger Games-- Career Tributes

Dande:
What did you guys think of the Career Tributes?

Jolly:
The Career Tributes? I think that they especially made the rest of the tributes really mad, because they volunteered. They're hoping they end up there.

O'Juice:
I feel like they're idiots, and they're, I'm sorry, they're suicidal!

Jolly:
They're training to go kill themselves.

Chair:
They've trained to the point where no one else could possibly stop them-

Dande:
-except they do stop them!

Smiley:
But wouldn't that be better than just having some random person who's barely anything be forced to go into the Games?

Dande:
It's not fair to the other people who are forced to go, and then they can beat them so easily.

Chair:
They trained for their whole lives so they could slaughter 23 other people and return home as celebrities.

Walle:
And I don't think they need it, because they were already so rich.

Dande:
Well not rich, just richer than the other Districts.

Walle:
Yeah.

Jolly:
In District 12, you have to go in, no one wants to volunteer to take your place. Katniss only volunteered because Prim would have had to go in, which I don't get how that happened because Gale had like 42-

Chair:
But then they'd have to write something about Gale. They'd already dropped him by that point.

Laughs

Jolly:
But that's not the point. In District 12, unless there's someone else to volunteer to take your place, you have to go. Everyone in the rich Districts is volunteering to go because they've been trained for it their whole lives.

Newhope:
Which is technically illegal...

Walle:
I have a question, how do you think they're chosen? Because I'm pretty sure that a lot of people-

Dande:
Yeah, there'd be more than one who wants to volunteer.

Jolly:
Just let the people who want to go duke it out.

Dande:
Maybe they have procedures in the other towns.

O'Juice:
I guess they'd take everyone who volunteered and then pick their names.

* * *

Dande:
But if this was real life, do you think the Careers would be better than they were in the book?

Chair:
The Careers weren't as good as everyone said they were. Once they lost the food, they all just started dying off.

Dande:
But I wonder because, they had to not be uber awesome because then Katniss couldn't win, and obviously she and Peeta had to win for the book to work, but if this was real, don't you think that the Career people would be some much better?

Newhope:
It's still technically illegal, so they can't be so overpowered that the Capitol knows they they've been training them.

Dande:
Oh yeah, I forgot that.

The Hunger Games-- Cinna & Killing

Dande:
What did you think of the whole 'girl on fire' thing.

Jolly:
That, I totally expected that to backfire, the premiere outfit, for when they introduced the pairs-

Walle:
I still think that the stylists are geniuses. The way that they truly try to make Katniss and Peeta actually shine.

Jolly:
I just liked Cinna, because he was nice. He was the only character that didn't have a really bad part in the book. He was just awesome for the entire thing.

Walle:
I suspect the maybe, Cinna might be from District 12. Because he choose District 12, and he actually tried to get more sponsors.

Dande:
But how could a person... isn't he from the Capitol though?

O'Juice:
Yeah, but I'm guessing he might have some kind of background, something might have happened-

Jolly:
-in District 12, yeah. A family there, or something.

Dande:
Well, does the Capitol have any connection to the rest of the Districts?

O'Juice:
I don't think everyone's always... I mean, if you're in the Capitol, it's not like you can't go out. He might have gone to District 12 for something, and then something might have happened there.

Chair:
Maybe he just got a shipment of coal and saw the people, and said, "I should help them someday..."

* * *

Dande: Before she went to the Games, the main character, Katniss, she watched this stuff on TV, and everybody watched this stuff on TV-

O'Juice:
Because they were forced to. They had to.

Chair:
It's mandatory.

Dande:
I don't get why the people stuck with it.

Chair:
With what?

Dande:
I get that, maybe, you're right, that some of the districts that are really rich, they'd have people who went in there and owned it... but all the people who are really poor, you'd think they'd refuse to kill someone rather than-

O'Juice:
Yeah, they did, they did the rebellion and-

Walle:
-and that's why they started the Hunger Games.

Dande:
Yeah, but why did the people who got chosen- the kids- why didn't they say, I'm not going to kill anyone, I'd rather have them kill me than kill somebody else.

Chair:
Because then they'd be dead.

O'Juice:
It's for their families, it's not just them. If they do that, the Capitol will kill their families.

Jolly:
I assume that's why Katniss only killed the boy from District 1-

Chair:
Well, he deserved it.

Jolly:
-yeah, he did. But, because she knew that everyone had families back home, and she just wanted to survive, she didn't want to have to kill them.

The Hunger Games-- Food & Sponsors

Dande:
Before they get to the Hunger Games, everything is about food. You really notice that this character notices food a lot.

Jolly:
Yeah that's because she can't get a lot at home. She's going to eat as much as she can before she gets there.

Chair:
Even in the interview, when they ask her her favorite part of the Capitol, she said the lamb stew.

Jolly:
That was funny.

Walle:
I don't get why it's called the Hunger Games. It's not like they're starving to death.

Newhope:
Because that would be boring!

Jolly:
If you don't go up to the Cornucopia and just can't hunt, you're dead.

Dande:
It's also because it's a lot different to fight people to the death on a full stomach than an empty stomach. And the thing is that as the Games go on, it gets a lot harder because people are more hungry.

* * *

Dande:
What did you guys think about the way people pay to give them goodies?

Jolly:
I like that, except how it costs more the farther you get into the Game. That's messed up.

Smiley:
I don't get the whole sponsor thing. Because they say, "Oh, how many people must have payed so much money to give me this little thing."

O'Juice:
What happens is, you have to give a good impression, and then people that like her give money to Haymitch-

Jolly:
If I think that Katniss is going to make it all the way through the Game, I'll send Haymitch money to send her stuff throughout the Game.

Dande:
It's not like a bet, I mean I guess sure they have bets, but it's more like if you like them, if you think they're cool and you want to help them.

Walle:
I don't think Haymitch bought it, I think they would send the actual items, because the bread was created in District 11.

Dande:
But it isn't the items they're paying for, it's the privilege to give them the items.

Walle:
I think it's like when you're voting for American Idol, except you pay money to vote for them.

Dande:
That's a good example.

The Hunger Games-- Names

Dande:
Jolly, didn't you want to talk about Peeta's name?

Jolly:
That really annoyed me. It's lame.

Walle:
Isn't that a type of bread?

Newhope:
That's why they named him that way, because he's the baker's son.

O'Juice:
You're a baker, you name your son after bread?

Newhope:
And if you're in the forest, your name is Katniss after a plant! Make's sense!

Laughs

O'Juice:
That's so cool.

Newhope:
And if you work with jewels, you get named Glimmer.

Jolly:
Yeah, that's pretty lame. The ridiculous stuff they name them in the rich Districts.

* * *

Jolly:
I think they should have let us hear each person's interview, because it's kind of annoying to keep track of who's dead and who's not.

Chair:
Half of these people don't even have names.

Dande:
I think she didn't want to talk more about it because she didn't want to slow down the book, she wanted to make the book fast.

Walle:
Also, I don't think she wanted the people to have an emotional connection to the person, because once you know their name, you sort of get to know them a bit more.

Dande:
But the whole book is supposed to be gruesome and people dying...

Jolly:
I think she should have at least nicknamed them, like she did with Foxface.

Dande:
Did Foxface ever get a real name?

Laughs

Chair:
No, she was just Foxface.

The Hunger Games-- First Impressions & Prose

Dande:
Overall, good book?

Chorus of agreement

Walle:
It was better than I expected.

Dande:
Oh, you don't like my book-choosing abilities?

Laughs

Newhope:
It doesn't help, the title, at all. You have to really read the inside cover.

Dande:
I'm guessing that they count more on word-of-mouth than people picking it up for the cover.

Newhope:
It's definitely engineered towards that.

O'Juice:
Actually, you know what I first heard about when I heard the title? I thought it would be some girl on the streets of New York or something like that.

Walle:
I thought it would be something about a person who's struggling to live, not a futuristic society.

Dande:
You thought I picked a memoir?

Walle:
Yeah...

Laughs

Dande:
What did you guys think the actual way the book was told, the prose, the writing style? It was present tense.

Windex:
Better than Dickens...

Laughs [Editor's Note* Many Members of MYABC recently read Dickens in English Class]

O'Juice:
I liked how it wasn't an all knowing author. It was from her perspective. It wasn't one second she's talking about this, another second she's talking about something else, and it's like, how do you know that? I want to follow it from what she knows.

Walle:
I also liked the fact that in the beginning, it wasn't a description of her whole life, and then the Hunger Games start. I like the way they incorporated her past into the present.

Jolly:
I like how they tell you about her life during the Games.

Newhope:
They didn't tell you about that girl she found, with the cut off tongue, until she actually met her.

Dande:
Actually, if you noticed the Hunger Games actually started halfway through the book, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like it goes by so quick.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Dande here, and welcome to the Morris YA Book Club Blog!

This month we read The Hunger Games, and overall, everyone enjoyed it. I don't want to spoil too from our discussions, but I think it's important to note that the conversation kept revolving around a few key things: the Katniss/Peeta/Gale dynamic, the cliffhanger ending, and speculation on the next book. So be on the look out for those interesting posts!

The schedule for Hunger Games posts is as follows:

• April 20th, 2009-- First Impressions & Prose
• April 21st, 2009-- Names
• April 23rd, 2009-- Food & Sponsors
• April 24th, 2009-- Cinna & Killing
• April 27th, 2009-- Career Tributes
• April 28th, 2009-- Tracker Jackers, Forest, & the Pin
• April 30th, 2009-- Foxface, Rue, & Tresh
• May 1st, 2009-- Cornucopia, Wolves, & Injury
• May 4th, 2009-- The Capitol & Berries (Part 1)
• May 5th, 2009-- Berries (Part 2)
• May 6th, 2009-- The Ending
• May 7th, 2009-- "Gale vs. Peeta" (Part 1)
• May 8th, 2009-- "Gale vs. Peeta" (Part 2)
• May 12th, 2009-- The Next Book
• May 14th, 2009-- Bloopers: Athens & A Japanese Game Show
• May 15th, 2009-- One Last Comment from Everyone

At this meeting: Dande, Newhope, Jolly, Chair, O'Juice, Smiley, Windex, Walle