<p>I haven’t read the book, but will be seeing the movie tonight. I was surprised that my bookclub wants to read the first book.</p>
<p>My book club read it, and we had an interesting and lively conversation about it. I was surprised that I was able to get through the first book because of the dark subject matter, but I got caught up in it and ended up finishing the series. Before I read it, I thought it was an odd choice. I might go see the movie in a few weeks, after the initial hubbub wears down a little.</p>
<p>Coronax,
This will be my first time seeing a movie before reading the book. I am pleased that your bookclub found it worth discussing. The suggestion was made by a middle school teacher, and she plans to invite some students to come to our meeting. I think it is terrific way to introduce these kids to a bookclub.</p>
<p>What a nice idea to invite students to your book club, bookworm. It would be interesting to hear their points of view, and what parts of the book they find most interesting. The member who selected the book for our group did so on the advice of her teenage daughter. My son, who’s in college, is seeing it tonight with his girlfriend. He hasn’t read the book, so I’m looking forward to hearing what he thinks about it.</p>
<p>I’ve been reading through this thread (just spotted it) and I have to question the educational value of seeing the movie. I find it hard to believe that the books are in the curriculum of middle school because of their newness (it took YEARS of parental lobbying to convince our school’s powers to remove several truly horrid books from the 6th grade curriculum and replaced with more relevant, interesting and readible choices). The movie trip seems gratuitous. I would rather teachers TAUGHT during the school day and let me decide what entertainments my kids can enjoy.</p>
<p>OTOH, I think the books are a great choice for an extra curricular book club. It could attract more kids who struggle/don’t like reading and would provide plenty of fodder for discussion even at the middle school level.</p>
<p>Mere mom,
The book most certainly is not part of the curriculum. This is a private school. The teacher noticed so many kids reading the books that she became interested. I read the Twilight series for same reason. What will be fun is if book club members bring any of their children. Regardless, we’ve been reading so many heavy books that we need something fun.</p>
<p>Great idea bringing the kids into book club - a real cross generational opportunity!</p>
<p>Funny story. DD1 read Twilight when it first came out. She was ridiculed by several friends for reading “vampyre”/“goth” junk. Fast forward 6 months, and those same friends were reading their copies as fast as they could. Several of these friends were not big readers, and didn’t get on the Hogwarts Express when HP furor heated up. D1 was glad to have something “literary - ish” to talk with friends about.</p>
<p>D1 started a book club among these friends that has been kept alive by younger sibling and HER friends. The level of books has risen to the point where D2’s circle is reading A Clockwork Orange, Crime and Punishment and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest this year. And believe me, D2 wouldn’t crack the cover of ANY of these three without the book club!</p>
<p>Movies are sometimes shown to highlight a different interpretation of what is read in school, or other times it could be something about history or whatever. I remember falling in love with the movie version of “1776” (still love it, so sue me), and also because it was one of the first times I saw a movie about the American revolution that showed them as living, breathing human beings with faults and follies and all the rest rather then the demi gods you still see them portrayed as, as ‘the founding fathers’ (and a fantastic cast, I might add, I will never associate John Adams with anyone but William Daniels and Franklin with Howard Da Silva:). </p>
<p>From what I am led to believe from the movie reviews, the movie is quite sanitized from the books, they don’t show the kids actually killing one another or I would presume, the dead bodies of those who fall to make it more palatable.</p>
<p>
I just came back from a family trip. My 50 something year old cousin read it because her kids did. My nieces and nephews had all read it. The waitress at the restaurant had read it. The stewardess on the flight commented on it. Walking down the aisle on the plane, every third row or so had a copy of it. I decided I needed to read it just so I don’t feel left out.</p>
<p>Questioning whether a young adult book that has had critical acclaim whether it is appropriate for someone who is not in that age range is ridiculous. </p>
<p>Harry Potter is the biggest example of how a series of books spread throughout the generations. It helps the kids who the book is usually aimed for connect with their parents and talk about concepts which aren’t discussed on a peer to peer level. </p>
<p>If you read into the subtext of both The Hunger Games and Harry Potter you will find so many comments on society, racial relations, class warfare, etc. </p>
<p>It is great to see multiple generations of people read these books. Most of the people I know who read The Hunger Games are college students. Don’t be embarrassed to read these books or any book that is labeled for young adults. A lot of time these books have a greater message in them than you think.</p>
<p>MereMom, I understand what you’re saying, but here’s a different perspective: My 3rd-grade-teacher friend had her class reading Harry Potter when it first came out. Great literature? No. But she said it gave her students a hunger for reading. </p>
<p>Maybe the thought process here is that seeing The Hunger Games will spark interest in reading the books, which may lead to the students wanting to read other books.</p>
<p>"My 3rd-grade-teacher friend had her class reading Harry Potter when it first came out. Great literature? No. But she said it gave her students a hunger for reading. "</p>
<p>I think the latter is much more important, the great piece of literature that isn’t read isn’t worth all that much, it reminds me of modern classical music that most audiences detest but are told is ‘great music’.</p>
<p>Mark Twain as usual had a great take on ‘the great books’, he defined a great book as "a book everyone knows they should read but don’t want to read’ <em>smile</em> (though his own great books are more then worth reading)</p>
<p>I read the first 10 pages or so of Hunger Games and the writing is pretty solid, I don’t think I’ll go beyond it, simply because the world is already so screwed up, why would I want to depress myself further?</p>
<p>Newbie here, hello!</p>
<p>I’m in my 40’s and was blown away by The Hunger Games. I wouldn’t call it a light read, and I think it lends itself to a ton of thought and discussion. As far as adults reading kid lit, I am pretty bored with adult books these days. I love to read, am a voracious reader, really, but I haven’t found many interesting and GOOD adult books in recent years. They all seem the same…sweeping sagas, family dramas, or depressing-trying-to-be-edgy literature. I’m in a book club and I’m thinking about quitting because I’ve really hated almost everything we’ve read. (Except Winter’s Bone, which was turned into the Academy Award winning movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, who plays Katniss in Hunger Games!)</p>
<p>The flip side is that I’ve read so many great YA books that have stayed with me–The Book Thief, The Fault in our Stars, The Hunger Games, Daughter of Smoke and Bone–I kind of feel like young adult literature is where it’s at currently, if you’re looking for something inventive and different. </p>
<p>I did read a review piece that basically said that in YA genre pieces (scifi or fantasy) often become considered literature and in adult fiction those genres are ghetto-ized and rarely become mainstream. But I just haven’t come across any adult fiction that really knocked me out, in a long time. (Am open to suggestions, though!)</p>
<p>OP here with an update: I just returned from previewing the movie and thoroughly enjoyed it! In my opinion, the violence was handled tastefully. They showed enough to communicate the horror, but not so much as to be overwhelming. For example, they blurred some of the intense fighting, and shots of bloody wounds and the dead/dying were only briefly on the screen or were kept distant. I can see why some people think it’s too sanitized. President Snow is quite mild, and only a tad threatening to the Gamemaker and to Katniss as the end. The novel portrays him as creepier and more evil, but then we see that side of him more in the later books. </p>
<p>Conclusion: I will be allowing my daughter to go on the field trip. However, I did warn her she might want to close her eyes during the final battle scene with the mutts if it scares her. The movie was pretty true to the book, which I always appreciate.</p>
<p>LasMa, I completely agree that anything we can do to get kids reading will only help. </p>
<p>The problem I have with going to this movie is that the book is not part of the curriculum. Your 3rd grade teacher was clearly a good one as she incorporated HP into her reading curriculum. OP’s school did not. In the original case, since the book was not being taught, using it as an extra curricular would seem more appropriate. </p>
<p>I still do not agree with the idea of entertaining our kids with pop culture movies during the school day. Especially when no work has been done in the classroom to explore the themes and ideas within the curriculum (reading. social studies, etc.)</p>
<p>Our eldest DD went to a private school that did a great job pulling together literature and the other disciplines. I know it can be done well.</p>
<p>Once a year, we have a “fair” at my office where a bunch of different vendors come in with snacks and various silly little gadgets for us to play with, and they have a drawing for xboxes and restaurant gift cards-- and we win tickets to enter into the drawing by winning at bean bag toss, basketball shoot, etc. This year the mascot from a local pro sports team came so we could get our picture taken with him. Our office is normally EXTREMELY strict and professional, but we spend the better part of half a workday screwing around at the fair, scary strict CEO and all. Is it productive? Not really. Does it have anything to do with selling commercial property insurance? Absolutely not. Is it hurting anybody or doing any significant damage to our productivity? No. If the world doesn’t end when my office does it, I feel like the middle school might be okay.</p>
<p>haven’t read the entire thread, but if the reward of going to a movie gets a typical non-reader to pick up a book, I’m all for it. S1 is not a big pick-up-anything reader, made me bring home D1’s copy when I dropped her back to college last weekend. </p>
<p>I remember D1’s 4th or 5th grade class going to Holes the week it opened for a field trip. (it was her Language Arts teacher’s favorite book). </p>
<p>If there is classroom discussion that compares/contrasts the book to the movie, all the better.</p>
<p>I’ll be finishing the book on a couple of long drives this weekend and will see if I’m hooked enough to move on to the second one. I found that the book made it very easy for me to visualize the locations so it will be interesting to see how well the movie matches my imagination.</p>
<p>I picked up the first book when I didn’t have anything better to read and was surprised by how interested I was. I read through them all and liked them. </p>
<p>The big factor about the movie for me is no one in any review that I read mentions the jerky camera technique. It was not continuous but it was throughout the movie, to the point that I had to look away in many scenes to avoid feeling sick. I think that needs to be more openly discussed because I would not have gone if I’d known. While I was looking away from the screen I was watching the very young children who were there. There were preschoolers and kids of all elementary ages. Most were squirmy and whining and wanting to leave. The youngest ones didn’t have any idea what was going on but the 7-9 year olds concerned me.</p>
<p>I hate those jerky camera styles. Part of my dislike of the show Friday Night Lights was because it made me dizzy to watch. Who likes this style? Take me back to the day of steady, multi-camera shooting.</p>