Catching Fire (Hunger Games Series #2)

by Suzanne Collins

Overview

Suzanne Collins continues the amazing story of Katniss Everdeen in the phenomenal Hunger Games trilogy.

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780439023498
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	09/01/2009
Series:	Hunger Games
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	19,689
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.40(d)
Lexile:	820L (what's this?)
Age Range:	13 - 17 Years

About the Author

Suzanne Collins is the author of the bestselling Underland Chronicles series, which started with Gregor the Overlander. Her groundbreaking young adult novels, The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, and Mockingjay, were New York Times bestsellers, received wide praise, and were the basis for four popular films. She returned to the world of Panem with The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Year of the Jungle, her picture book based on the year her father was deployed in Vietnam, was published in 2013 to great critical acclaim. To date, her books have been published in fifty-three languages around the world.

What People are Saying About This

Stephenie Meyer

“I also got an early look at a book I've been eagerly awaiting: Catching Fire, the sequel to Suzanne Collins' phenomenal The Hunger Games. It not only lived up to my high expectations, it surpassed them. It's just as exciting as The Hunger Games, but even more gut wrenching, because you already know these characters, you've already suffered with them. Suzanne takes the story places I wasn't expecting, and she's never afraid to take it to very hard places. Stunning. You won't sleep when you're reading this one. It hits shelves September 1st. I suggest beginning in the early morning and clearing your calendar for the day.”

Charlaine Harris

“People have been talking about Suzanne Collins’s THE HUNGER GAMES, and with good reason. It’s classified as a YA novel, but there’s plenty here to keep adults interested, I can testify. In Collins’s world, a post-apocalyptic America, teen children are harvested from each of twelve districts every year to participate in the Hunger Games. Food is primary source of concern in Panem, scarce and doled out by the government. Whoever wins the Hunger Games gets food for himself/herself and the family for life. How do you win? By killing all the other contestants. It’s very like “Survivor,” but for real. A different venue with a different landscape is picked each year, and the government throws in different twists to affect the outcome: torrential rain, the drying up of water sources, planted explosives, etc. Katniss and Peeta, the teens who are chosen from the coal-producing region, are at a great disadvantage, but due to Katniss’s cleverness they contrive to have an edge. This is a great book, and very thought-provoking. Read this along with your teen and discuss it.”

Editorial Reviews

Praise for The Hunger Games

"A violent, jarring, speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense. . . . I couldn't stop reading."

--Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly

"I was so obsessed with this book. . . . The Hunger Games is amazing."

--Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight saga

"Brilliantly plotted and perfectly paced."

--John Green, The New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

I really liked The Hunger Games. But I love the new book, Catching Fire…Collins has done that rare thing. She has written a sequel that improves upon the first book…Katniss is more sophisticated in this book, and her observations are more acute. We see this when she notices how much more difficult it is to kill people once you know them, or when she observes the decadent (and for the reader perhaps uncomfortably familiar) citizens of the Capitol gorging and then taking pills to make themselves vomit, or with her gradual realization that she may just stand for something greater than herself. All this is accomplished with the light touch of a writer who truly understands writing for young people: the pacing is brisk and the message tucked below the surface.
—The New York Times

Gabrielle Zevin

Fresh from their improbable victory in the annual Hunger Games, Katniss and Peeta get to enjoy the spoils only briefly before they must partake in a Capitol-sponsored victory tour. But trouble is brewing—President Snow tells Katniss directly he won’t stand for being outsmarted, and she overhears rumbles of uprisings in Panem’s districts. Before long it’s time for the next round of games, and because it’s the 75th anniversary of the competition, something out of the ordinary is in order. If this second installment spends too much time recapping events from book one, it doesn’t disappoint when it segues into the pulse-pounding action readers have come to expect. Characters from the previous volume reappear to good effect: Katniss’s stylist, Cinna, proves he’s about more than fashion; Haymitch becomes more dimensional. But the star remains Katniss, whose bravery, honesty and wry cynicism carry the narrative. (About her staff of beauticians she quips: “They never get up before noon unless there’s some sort of national emergency, like my leg hair.”) Collins has also created an exquisitely tense romantic triangle for her heroine. Forget Edward and Jacob: by book’s end (and it’s a cliffhanger), readers will be picking sides—Peeta or Gale? Ages 12–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7 Up—Every year in Panem, the dystopic nation that exists where the U.S. used to be, the Capitol holds a televised tournament in which two teen "tributes" from each of the surrounding districts fight a gruesome battle to the death. In The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008), Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, the tributes from impoverished District Twelve, thwarted the Gamemakers, forcing them to let both teens survive. In this rabidly anticipated sequel, Katniss, again the narrator, returns home to find herself more the center of attention than ever. The sinister President Snow surprises her with a visit, and Katniss's fear when Snow meets with her alone is both palpable and justified. Catching Fire is divided into three parts: Katniss and Peeta's mandatory Victory Tour through the districts, preparations for the 75th Annual Hunger Games, and a truncated version of the Games themselves. Slower paced than its predecessor, this sequel explores the nation of Panem: its power structure, rumors of a secret district, and a spreading rebellion, ignited by Katniss and Peeta's subversive victory. Katniss also deepens as a character. Though initially bewildered by the attention paid to her, she comes almost to embrace her status as the rebels' symbolic leader. Though more of the story takes place outside the arena than within, this sequel has enough action to please Hunger Games fans and leaves enough questions tantalizingly unanswered for readers to be desperate for the next installment.—Megan Honig, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

In the sequel to the hugely popular The Hunger Games (2008), Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark, having won the annual Games, are now rich and famous-and trapped in the fiction that they are lovers. They are seen as a threat to the Capitol, their unusual manner of winning an act of rebellion that could inspire uprisings throughout Panem. Knowing her life is in danger, Katniss considers escaping with her family and friends but instead reluctantly assumes the role of a rebel, almost forced into it by threats from the insidious President Snow. Beyond the expert world building, the acute social commentary and the large cast of fully realized characters, there's action, intrigue, romance and some amount of hope in a story readers will find completely engrossing. Collins weaves in enough background for this novel to stand alone, but it will be a far richer experience for those who have read the first installment and come to love Katniss, Peeta, Haymitch and the rest of the desperate residents of this dystopia. A humdinger of a cliffhanger will leave readers clamoring for volume three. (Science fiction. 12 & up)

Kirkus Reviews

Tatiana Maslany narrates the second book of The Hunger Games trilogy in a wide range of voices, giving the large cast of characters unique personalities. As Katniss tells the story of her current life as a co-winner of the Hunger Games, her voice projects her emotions and state of mind. She sounds breathless with fear as she recounts incidents from the game, impatient with Haymitch’s drunken stupors, and cautious as she maneuvers to protect the people closest to her. The compassion and empathy in her mother’s voice bring an oasis of comfort. President Snow’s unctuous voice hisses like a snake when he comes to District 12 to threaten Katniss. Haymitch’s useful advice comes through his inebriated slur. N.E.M. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

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