The Hunger Games (and may the odds be ever in your flavour)

Ever feel so hungry that you would say you are starving? Ever go to bed with an empty stomach and no promise of eating the next day? Katniss Everdeen has spent all her sixteen years living as such. The rules the Capitol has placed on the district residents of Panem are simple; you live in the twelve districts and you are a slave, you live in the Capitol and you are not. Katniss comes from District 12, a district devoted to mining coal for the Capitol. The Capitol provides too little food for the populace and leaving the boundaries of the districts is illegal. Yet, Katniss learned how to bow hunt from her father and has fed her family and some friends ever since he died.

The annual event the Capitol hosts, known as the Hunger Games, is a way of reminding the people of the districts that after their rebellion that got District 13 eliminated that they will always be under the control of the Capitol. The Hunger Games has a female and male tribute from each district drawn from a lottery of all residents between the ages of twelve and eighteen. For the 74^th Hunger Games, Katniss’s younger sister is chosen and Katniss volunteers to take her place. The male tribute is a young man named Peeta Mellark, the young man responsible for saving Katniss from dying of starvation after her father died.

In the arena, Katniss defies the Capitol as she has always done. The consequences send ripples through Panem that not even Katniss could predict.

This was the best map I could find and I liked this one the most. Others were purely unoriginal. So, District 6 is actually in charge of Transportation, but someone didn't tell this mapmaker!

If I had anything to say for the Hunger Games is that it can be read for so many different meanings. Me, I look at it from the POV of someone who would willingly enter into the idea of hunting in the woods as a mean of survival. I am a vegetarian, but there are always plants to propagate in the forest. Katniss mentions coming across a strawberry patch and cultivating to keep the wild animals from going after it. There are many things that a forest can offer. And I am working on talking the people at Edgewood into letting me plant a few things in the forest behind the library that can be harvested by future Edgewood students. If I can find an open area that gets sunlight, I will work on planting strawberries there. Ginseng also seems to be expensive to buy, yet grows easily in a forest. I have come across large patches of spring onion and pulled them up to be surprised at what I am looking at. Other non-invasive trees can be brought in to replace any buckthorn or honeysuckle that is removed. Grape vines can be encouraged to grow up some of the larger trees. Fiddleheads of ferns are also delicious, so more ferns being brought in would be amazing.