Day Twenty-Seven: 10 Things I Hate about The Hunger Games...Movie.

I really loved The Hunger Games trilogy from the moment one of my classes suggested that I read the series.  Although I like the books, I'm not a big fan of the movie.  The movie wasn't bad, but there were several things about the movie that I didn't like.  Here are the 10 Things I Hated about The Hunger Games in no particular order.
#1-The Point of View:  In the novel, Katniss is your 1st person narrator. In the movie, you have to rely on a 3rd person narrator, which detracts from the inner turmoil Katniss feels, especially when it comes to Peeta and Gale.
#2-Peeta:  I like Josh Hutcherson. He's not a bad actor, and he's even a little cutie. He's not my Peeta. Nothing about Josh Hutcherson says he can throw a 100 pound sack of flour or was a wrestler for that matter.  Plus, he's shorter than Jennifer Lawrence.  Liam Hemsworth would have made a better Peeta, or the kid that played Cato.  Also, they made Peeta into such a weakling.
#3-Katniss: I like Jennifer Lawrence as well.  She is a great actress. Here are my problems. One Katniss is suppose to be a rather thin girl.  Jennifer is not heavy by any stretch, but she looks like she has never missed a meal whereas Katniss has.  She is too pale for the character as well.  I actually saw the girl who played Clove as a better fit for Katniss as far as appearance was concerned.  P.S. Why was Katniss so distant AT ALL TIMES?!! Especially in the cave, when she really was feeling Peeta. At times Jennifer Lawrence played Katniss with the interest that Suzanne Collins had with the final book.
#4-Katniss/Peeta's Capitol Costumes: The girl on fire looked more like smoked Alaskan. The costumes were better by Catching Fire, but their coal miners outfits were beautiful until the fire was added. Then, they just became rather lame.
#5-The Mockingjay Pin: When I took my students to see The Hunger Games after reading the novel, one of their biggest disappointments was the fact that Greasy Sae instead of Madge Undersee the mayor's daughter gave the pin to Katniss.  While it made for an interesting moment between Katniss and Prim, it lost the symbolism of that moment between Madge and Katniss. Madge giving Katniss that pin is a big eff you to the Captiol from the daughter of one of its underlings.  Plus, it has a connection to Haymitch as well, which of course you lose when you have it being a not-so-good luck charm for Prim, and it will be difficult to make the connection between the Haymitch and that pin later in the series.
#6-Haymitch-I liked Woody Harrelson as Haymitch, but why remove Haymitch from the stage in District 12. His stumble was more choreographed than we are led to believe, but you lose that when they remove his presence until the drunken stupor on the train.
#7-The dogs: If it was one thing the Capitol loved to do, it was to mess with peoples minds. So, at the end of the games, it had Katniss, Cato, and Peeta to the cornucopia.  The dogs had hair and eyes to match the tributes who died during the games.  The dogs in the movie were a weird pit bull type hot mess.  Of course, they would have no problem killing those dogs, unlike the characters in the book who felt bad about possibly killing fellow tributes again.
#8-Peeta's dad's cookies:  They just eliminated the moment between Katniss and Peeta's dad.  He gives her the cookies that she eventually throws out of the moving train.  She throws them away because the remind her too much of the bread that Peeta throws to her when she was starving.  They, of course, hit a patch of dandelions which also remind her of Peeta. They show the reader that Katniss my have more of a thing for Peeta than she would like to admit even to herself.  They also remind her how much she feels obligated to Peeta.
#9-Katniss' dad:  She mentions her dad through the movie, but we couldn't get a flashback to see how close these two really were?  We just get dad blowing up, not making bows, or teaching Katniss to hunt or scavenge, just BOOM, dad's dead.
#10-The Avoxes:  The avoxes were a big deal to Katniss in the novel, especially the red-haired girl who served her in the penthouse--the one she saw attempt to escape while she and Gale were hunting in the forest.  No mention of this in the movie, she barely notices the avoxes, much less recognizes the girl.
These are not all of the differences between the movie and the books.  These are just some of the ones that bothered me the most.  FYI, I never really cared for movie Gale, nor book Gale.  Just an observation.
Until next time, "Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor" -Effie Trinket

Day Sixteen: World Book Day-My Thirty Favorite Books to Teach

Today is World Book Day in the United Kingdom. I thought I would do a list of my favorite British literature, but that list would be really short-mostly Shakespeare and the Romantic Poets.  Instead, I decided to compose a list of my thirty favorite books to teach (that was hard to say, because I really insist that students do not call them books but by their genre). Over the course of my 18 year teaching career, I have taught many works.  Some I like, and some that I didn't like as much, but here they are in from least favorite to favorite.  Just so you know, I have taught grades 7-12 and currently, teach a dual enrollment college class, so the works come from all levels. I like variety, so some of these works I will teach every year, while some I have either retired, or only teach every other year.
I based my choices on how much I like the work and how well the students respond, and the actual work.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (every year)
2. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (every year)
3. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (every year)
4. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (most years)
5. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (every other year)
6. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (the past three years)
7. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (it's been a while)
8. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs (once, but I love this book)
9. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (every other year)
10. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (twice)
11. A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry (every other year)
12. A Doll's House by Henrik Ibsen (every year)
13. Oedipus Rex by Sophocles (every year)
14. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (every year)
15. The Crucible by Arthur Miller (every year)
16. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (retired to another teacher)
17. The Tempest by William Shakespeare (every year)
18. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (once)
19. The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton (when I taught junior high)
20. Mythology by Edith Hamilton (every other year)
21. Antigone by Sophocles (when I taught ninth grade)
22. Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (every other year)
23. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (an independent work every year for my honors class)
24. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (every other year)
25. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck (every other year)
26. King Lear by William Shakespeare (every other year with my college class)
27. The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum (when I taught junior high)
28. The Miracle Worker by William Gibson (when I taught junior high)
29. The Pearl by John Steinbeck (retired to another teacher-I really don't like it)
30. Billy Budd by Herman Melville (retired because I grew tired of teaching it.)

So, this is my list of favorites works for my class. How many have you read?  Which is your favorite on the list.
Until next week, “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.”― Oscar Wilde