Free The Hunger Games: Official Illustrated Movie Companion by Scholastic, Kate Egan Page B

three-and-a-half-page write-up included an overview of the Games and brief descriptions of each book. “Although set in the future,” Collins wrote, “
The Hunger Games
explores disturbing issues of modern warfare such as who fights our wars, how they are orchestrated, and the ever-increasing opportunities to observe them being played out.” She also noted that Katniss, though “distrustful,” has “a deep capacity to love and sacrifice for those few people she cares for.” The final books have hewn closely to the original outlines — except for the titles. The original working title for the first book in the trilogy was
The Tribute of District Twelve.

    Tributes pay close attention to Atala (Karan Kendrick) during their first day in the Training Center.
     
    On the strength of those few pages, Scholastic snapped up the right to publish the
Hunger Games
trilogy.

    “When I sat down to write this series, I assumed it would be like
The Underland Chronicles
,” Collins told the
New York Times
later. “Written in the third person and the past tense. I began writing, and the words came out not only in the first person, in the present tense, in Katniss’s voice. It was almost as if the character was insisting on telling the story herself. So I never really make a concentrated effort to get inside her head; she was already very much alive in mine.”
    The publisher knew it had something special on its hands as soon as Collins turned in her first draft. Editorial director David Levithan says, “I remember that the manuscript came in on a Friday, and I read it over the weekend. Two other people read it — Kate Egan, Suzanne’s longtime editor, and Jennifer Rees, an editor who was also working on the books. On Monday morning, we were dying to talk to each other — it was simply one of the most astonishing things we’d ever read. Our editorial conversation pretty much consisted of one word:
Wow
.”
    Everyone involved knew the best way to sell the book was to get people to read it. First up were the people in Scholastic’s sales, marketing, and publicity departments, who were blown away and started off the buzzstorm. Advance reader’s copies went out and were devoured in one sitting by booksellers and librarians. Scholastic announced a first printing of 50,000 copies . . . and then doubled it . . . and then doubled it again, as the buzz got louder and louder. Suzanne’s literary agent, Rosemary Stimola, began selling foreign rights to publishers across the world. To date, it has sold in 45 territories. When
The Hunger Games
was published in October 2008, it met with resounding praise.
    The first reviews came from book-industry magazines like
Publishers Weekly
and
Booklist
, and every one of them was a rave.
Horn Book
said, “Collins has written a compulsively readable blend of science fiction, survival story, unlikely romance, and social commentary.”
    School Library Journal
agreed, writing, “Collins’s characters are completely realistic and sympathetic as they form alliances and friendships in the face of overwhelming odds; the plot is tense, dramatic, and engrossing. This book will definitely resonate with the generation raised on reality shows like
Survivor
and
American Gladiator
.”
    As
The Hunger Games
began to climb to the top of bestseller lists, other bestselling authors began to weigh in.
    In
Entertainment Weekly
, Stephen King reviewed
The Hunger Games
, calling it, “A violent, jarring, speed-rap of a novel that generates nearly constant suspense. . . . I couldn’t stop reading. . . . Collins is an efficient no-nonsense prose stylist with a pleasantly dry sense of humor. Reading
The Hunger Games
is as addictive (and as violently simple) as playing one of those shoot-it-if-it-moves videogames in the lobby of the local eightplex; you know it’s not real, but you keep plugging in quarters anyway . . .”

    Producer Nina Jacobson on set in North Carolina.
     
    Stephenie Meyer loved it, too, and as