The Hunger Games!

“The Hunger Games,” the most anticipated film in the history of Little Shop of Stories, comes out on Friday.  For the super eager, most every theater, including AMC North DeKalb 16, will be having midnight showings tomorrow night.  (Plug: Little Shop is hosting a Hunger Games Party on Thursday at 7 p.m.)

The movie is based on the first book in Suzanne Collins’ young adult trilogy, which has been a publishing phenomena.  For the uninitiated, the books are set in a post-apocalyptic future in which the the known world has been reduced to twelve districts.  In retaliation against an uprising, the sadistic government invented the Hunger Games, a reality television program in which 24 teenage contestants — one girl and one boy from each district — meet in a fight to the death.

Though this is an undeniably unusual premise for a YA novel — and the books are indeed dark — the series is extremely compelling and the epitome of great storytelling.  Scholastic creatively marketed the novel (as has Lionsgate for the movie).  I have no doubt that Katniss Everdeen, the series’ narrator, will long be regarded as one of the great characters of children’s literature.

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