Monday, April 2, 2012

It's Been a Hunger Games Week

There has been little on my mind this past week besides Katniss, Peeta, President Snow, and the horrors of Panem.  Why?  Because The Hunger Games has taken over the world!

Like a huge portion of the USA, I went to see the new Hunger Games movie opening weekend.  I loved it!  It's right up there with Lord of the Rings as best book-to-movie adaptation (way above Harry Potter and especially Percy Jackson).  I could rave about it for hundreds of paragraphs, but I think its success is best summed up this way:

Usually, when I see a movie based on a book, the first thing I want to do when leaving the theater is reread that book, both to relive the awesomeness and to cleanse my mental palate of the errors made by the movie.  When I left Hunger Games?  I immediately wanted to reread Catching Fire and Mockingjay.  The movie had done such a good job at telling Katniss' story that I didn't need to read about it again--I wanted to continue with her ever-increasing horror story.

Books and movies aren't all, though.  I've been planning a Hunger Games party for the library, and last Friday, it happened!  41 middle schoolers/tributes showed up to live their own (less violent) Hunger Games.

I had some lovely librarian assistants (that's me dressed up as Effie, which worked well since I mostly ran around making sure things were staying on schedule).


This was not the end of the party!  Click the link to find out what happened next!




The tributes went through training stations, then had to divide into districts and create an interview costume that represented their district out of only toilet paper and duct tape.  The results were really creative and fantastic, and we had a hard time choosing a winner.



After a trivia quiz and some pizza, everyone was ready for the main event!  Since I wasn't on board with having the kids slaughter each other (I did learn something from reading Collins' books), I printed a bunch of yellow cards with pictures of supplies like water, matches, and swords on the back.  The kids could run around collecing what supplies they wanted, then trade with others once they were all chosen.  Finally I read out a Hunger Games scenario, and the tributes had to keep track of their score as the supplies they nabbed awarded them points.



With the handy dandy scorecards we kept for each tribute throughout the evening, we determined that there was a tie!  The two almost-victors were brought forward, and whoever answered first would win our grand prize, a $15 gift certificate to our nearest movie theater.  Very dramatically I asked, "Who is the protagonist of the Hunger Games?"  They stared at me for several seconds, and I doubted my usage of the word 'protagonist.'  But Sean quickly gathered his mental faculties and screamed, "Katniss Everdeen!" thereby becoming the winner of Dunlap's 1st Hunger Games.


1 comment:

  1. Yes, Miss Tricia, you say you were only "Effie" for an evening BUT...do I see a Katy Perry kareoke song fest in your future.??????

    the pinkness is so fun!

    sister of the travelling purse :-)

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