Catching Fire

Catching Fire. by Suzanne Collins. (2009). 391p. New York: Scholastic Press.

Awards and Honors: Publishers Weekly's Best Book Of The Year: Children's Fiction, A Booklist Editors' Choice, 2009

Review: 

The second installment of Suzanne Collins' wildly popular Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire is a fast paced, plot-driven adventure. In Catching Fire, Katniss has won the Hunger Games, but at what price? Katniss quickly learns that President Snow means to make her pay for her act of defiance in the Arena, but she also discovers that the monolithic dominance of the Capital may not be as powerful as it seems. The second book in the series, while still action-packed, focuses more on the workings of Panem, the incipient rebellion and Katniss's role as the face of that rebellion.

Opinion:

Although Catching Fire furthered the overall narrative arc, I found this novel to be less powerful than Collins' first book in the series, which was made more compelling with Katniss's relationships with Prim and Rue.

Ideas:

There are a slew of dystopic novels being published right now. Catching Fire has been massively popular with young people who may not typically read many novels, and thus makes an great way to segue young readers into other books.