The Hunger Games, Controversy and Censorship

The Hunger Games is a novel written in 2008 by Suzanne Collins about a dystopian future of what was once known as North America, now known as "Panem". The totalitarian nation of Panem is divided between 12 districts and the Capitol. Each year two young representatives from each district are selected by lottery to participate in The Hunger Games; Part entertainment, part brutal retribution for a past rebellion. The Capitol selects a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 from each of the twelve outlying districts to compete in the annual games, a televised fight-to-the-death. The novel is centered on Katniss Everdeen — a 16-year-old girl from District 12, who volunteers for her 12-year-old sister, Prim Everdeen, when Prim's name is chosen — and her male counterpart Peeta Mellark whom she has some rather dramatic history with. They are pitted against one another and bigger, stronger representatives, some of whom have trained for this their whole lives. Suzanne Collins was born on August 10, 1962 in Hartford, Connecticut. She is the daughter of a U.S. Air Force officer who served in the Vietnam War. As the daughter of a military officer, she and her family were constantly moving. She spent her childhood in the eastern U.S. and attended high school at Carver High School in Alabama and at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, where she was a Theater Arts major. She graduated from Indiana University with a double major in Drama and Telecommunications. In an interview with Hanna Hudson Suzanne was asked “Where her love of reading and writing came from?” and she responded with: In fifth and sixth grade, I went to school in an open classroom. And the English teacher, Miss Vance, was wonderful. On rainy days, she would take whoever was interested over to the side and read us Edgar Allan Poe stories. I remember all of us sitting around just wide-eyed as she read The Telltale Heart or The Mask of the Red Death. She didn't think we were too young to hear it. And we were