Review of the Hunger Games series, with a little Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, and Twilight Thrown In

The popular media item I was most wrong about was The Pirates of the Caribbean movie. When I heard that Disney was going to make a movie based on a ride at one of its theme parks, I thought it was the stupidest idea I had ever heard. Even when I found out that Johnny Depp, whom I love love LOVE, was going to star, still, I was not a believer. But when I actually watched the movie, I thought it was GREAT for the kind of film it was. Fun, fantastic, swashbuckling action, and interesting, larger-than-life characters, most especially the one-of-a-kind Captain Jack Sparrow that Depp created. But it has some interesting meat as well--some valuable lessons amongst all the ghosts and pirates and young lovers and such. It was a perfect summer blockbuster film, and I admit I was completely wrong in my pre-judgements.

But my second most egregious error may be my previous dismissal of The Hunger Game series.

The premise of the book--that is, a bunch of teenagers who have to fight to the death for the amusement of the TV audience--sounded like yet another grim, post-apocalyptic YA novel filled with senseless violence (which to me, a perennially upbeat person my entire life, seems inexplicably popular to today’s teenagers). But I was wrong. Well, it is a grim, post-apocalyptic novel...now that I’ve read the whole series, I’m not convinced it should be classified for Young Adults, unless by that they mean college students. Most of all, however, it is violent--more violent as the books proceed--but the violence is not senseless at all. The violence teaches us a lot. It teaches us about war, and about power, and about coercion. It teaches us about human nature, and how really horrible people can be to one another...but also how wonderful and loving and heroic they can be as well.

Because as it turns out, the fighting between the teenagers is really just the appetizer. The entire series is more of a meditation on totalitarianism, a la Fahrenheit 451 or Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, it incorporates more modern aspects to it, such as the rise of reality television and the latest devices for warfare.

The series also kind of made me think of Harry Potter for grown-ups. Only instead of magical Hogwarts castles where the four houses competed in Quidditch and the House Cup, here we have the dystopic nation of Panen, where the citizens of the 12 Districts that remain of the United States compete simply to survive. And Voldemort, mean dude that he is for children’s literature, really can’t compare with the political leaders in the Hunger Games, who wipe out entire villages, schools, hospitals, or even a whole District, seemingly without a qualm. Because in the Hunger Games, they aren’t just messing around, trying to get rid of an elderly wizard and “the boy who lived.” In the Hunger Games, they are in all-out war.

So the Hunger Games books get high marks for realistically depicting what happens in war. And I think it is a valuable thing for young people to read. Again, I wouldn’t advise it for middle schoolers; that is, I think they could read it, but I don’t think they would GET it. But teenagers, college students, young graduates whose lives have basically been untouched by the multiple “wars” we are in and have been over the past 10-20 years, but where all the pain and suffering and destruction occurs only in foreign countries and among our paid military--this is a great wake-up call to how awful war really is. And one of the greatest questions raised, which runs through all the books, is who your enemy really is. That is not always an easy question to answer in a war.

HOWEVER....there is another side to the books.

War, and political coercion, and when and how to fight back, are definitely major themes of the series. But there is another backbone to the stories, and that (just like Harry Potter) is love. Yes, there is the love triangle, a la Twilight, except about ONE THOUSAND times better, since the characters are interesting and multi-dimensional, and they demonstrate their love through their actions, not sitting around moony-eyed whining about how they can’t live (or not live....well, you know what I mean) without the other, like the dippy lovers in the current soap opera that is Mary Worth..

OK, sorry about that. I just had to get that out of my system.

So there is a love triangle, but the choice is much more realistic (vampire versus werewolf...come on). Do I choose the one who loves me irrationally and unconditionally, even though I don’t think s/he really knows me? Or do I choose the one who knows all about me, particularly my dark side, to which s/he seems to draw me? Actually choosing a partner not just by how s/he makes you feel (ESPECIALLY when you are awash in adolescent hormones), but by the way s/he acts and by the kind of person you are when you are with that person--now THAT is a lesson about love. Again, I’m not sure even teenagers are ready to think that way, but I’m pretty sure middle schoolers aren’t.

And the wonderful thing of the book is that is not the only type of love explored. There is love for family and love for friends and love for team mates and love for colleagues that maybe even should be thought of as enemies. There is love for the earth and love for the animals. There is all kinds of love. And that, again, lifts this series above the many dystopic YA series there are out there.

So in this series, there is war, and there is love. And because it is war, and because it is NOT Harry Potter (as much as I loved that series), if you make it through the end of the series, characters that you love will die. Because that is the reality of war. And you will be shocked, and you will miss them, and you may even cry, but you will go on to finish the book, and continue to appreciate them even after they have disappeared from the text. Because that is the reality of love.

So if you are up to experience all that--I don’t know a better current YA series to read.

PS--If you want to see my responses to the first two books in the series, visit:
Book Review:  The Hunger Games
A Concrete Poem on Catching Fire

Happy Birthday Harry Potter!

The books may be done, and the last movie may have been released, but we will still be celebrating Harry Potter for years to come!  Because his birthday is supposed to be July 31, it seemed that an observation of that occasion was in order.

We incorporated it into our science coop by fixing a Harry Potter meal and by continuing our work on Harry Potter genetics (which we started last week when we bred dragons). We started on our assignment, but all went home to re-read the books to fill in some of the question marks in our investigation, which I will describe in more detail in a future post when we have figured it out better.

However, in honor of Harry's birthday, we also did some cooking.  First, we made our version of Cornish pasties, which are mentioned several times in the book, since they are a traditional English dish.

To make things even more festive, we washed our pasties down with the famous Harry Potter Butterbeer.  There are lots of recipes for Butterbeer around, especially since the Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Orlando, FL, opened and started serving them cold.  But the recipe I've always been inspired by was vanilla ice cream, laced with a caramel/butterscotch/butter brickle add-in, added to a warm mug of either boiled apple cider (enhanced with soda water if it was not of the effervescent variety itself) or heated  cream soda.


Either way, the dish is a lovely drink.  We started by making the caramel,  then adding it to vanilla ice cream to liven things up.  

A scoop of the icream then goes into heated (or not) cream soda or apple cider.

It makes a lovely frothy birthday treat.

We made that meal on Friday with our Science Coop, but the actual date is Sunday, July 31.  We had some left-over butterbeer ice cream, so we used that to make another treat.

We made some Ginger Newts (the cookie or "biscuit" in Professor McGonagall's office in HP and the Order of the Phoenix, I believe...), and then layered them with some of the extra butterbeer ice cream.

It made a treat worthy of the birthdate of everyone's favorite wizard!

Lesson Plan: Mendel's Experiments in Genetics

Happy Mendel's Birthday to all!  As Google let us know, it is the 189th birthday of Gregor Mendel, the Austrian scientist who first recorded the patterns of reproduction, famously breeding peas to see what traits were passed onto the next generation, and thus earned the title of Father of Genetics.

Like I've said before, we like to celebrate everything around here, so we had a Gregor Mendel birthday party today.  We invited some friends over and together did an activity based on Mendel's cross-breeding peas experiment.  But since we didn't have the time for new plants to grow, plus peas aren't really that exciting for middle school-aged students, we did a simulated cross-breeding of a much more interesting life form suggested by our recent excursion to see the last Harry Potter movie--we did our simulated gene pool analysis based on breeding dragons!  We used a wonderful lesson plan developed at Vanderbilt and added onto by former middle school teacher Nancy Clark called "Inheritance Patterns in Dragons," which you can download from this page. (But if you aren't into dragons, but are into Harry Potter, there is another site where you can map the genetic path through which Muggles can produce witches and wizards and magical folk can have Squibbs from the National Institute of Health.)

After a general explanation of DNA and genetics, each student chose a set of seven "genes" with different dominant or recessive traits from the same male and female parents.

However, a worksheet helped them figure out what traits would be expressed in each specific offspring (fire breathing vs. no fire, number of toes or spines, color of body, wings, and tale, etc.).  Then each student drew a picture of a dragon with the genetic trails of that pairing.

So, for example, all the dragons (different in style though they might be) had blue bodies--obviously a dominant trait.  Three of the four had red wings and red tails; however, one had yellow wings and a yellow tail.  This demonstrates the fact that the same parents can produce a smaller number (statistically) of offspring with recessive trails, even if the parents themselves don't show those traits.

Anyway, the students really enjoyed it, and seemed to be clear about the basics of genetic inheritance after doing this exercise.

Plus, because it was, after all, a birthday party, I made a dish of Dragon Dip:

This is basically a healthier and vegan version of nachos, with whole wheat tortillas as the skeleton, tomato salsa as the blood, refried bean dip as the muscle, and, in honor of Mendel, peas as the dragon skin (except for the wings, where the skin is made of corn.  It is finished off with a grape tomato for its eye and dried jalapeno peppers as the fire breathing part, heated in the oven until hot, and them consumed with dragon skills (tortilla chips).

There are also some great online resources to use to explore this topic.  BioLogica has two web labs on genetics:  an online dragon genetics simulation, and animations of topics like meiosis along with a pea breeding experiment (like Mendel's) that is based on the fairy tale of the Princess and the Pea.  The Pea Soup website tells Mendel's story, as well as having an interactive simplified simulation of the pea experiment.

This is a fun topic to explore with middle schoolers, especially if you can include some of these more imaginative resources.....and everything goes better with some dragon-based food!

Movie Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

My husband and I just got back from watching what is probably the movie of the year, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.  Like watching Toy Story 3 last summer, it was definitely a bittersweet experience.  Who wants the wonderful world of Harry Potter books and movies to come to an end?  But I have to say, if it has to end, I think they did an excellent job putting the series to rest with this movie.
(Note:  If, by some chance, you haven't read the book and don't want to know any spoilers, then stop reading here.  And I wouldn't advise trying to see the movie without reading the books, or at least seeing all the previous movies; I think you would be completely lost if you came in blind for this one.)

As always, the movies leave out so much about the nuances and the details and the relationships, and like all the movie before it, there were scenes from the book that I was really disappointed not to see in the film.  But the two medias are different, and we have to embrace them for their strengths, rather than complain about their weaknesses.  There were scenes that presented themselves much more dramatically on the screen than I had ever imagined when reading the book, such as the scenes that showed Hogwarts students being marched in en mass that was chillingly reminiscent of Nazism.

But I think this movie does a great job ending the series because it has that good old archetypal feel of inspiring heroes rising to the call and a pretty black and white good triumphing over evil.  By separating the last book into two movies, this last film shows everyone at their best.  Gone are the jealousies and petty behaviors that our three main protagonists exhibited at times in Deathly Hallow, Part 1(and in the previous books); they are brave and true and clever throughout this movie.  And even the bad guys are kind of at their best this time, gathering for a straight-out test of their strengths rather than the political maneuvering or the simpering, sneaky nastiness shown in the earlier films by characters such as Delores Umbridge or Wormtail.

But for me, I think this movie really works because after it all--after all the years of magic and fantastical creatures and flying sports and all the other imaginative flourishes J.K. Rowling has packed into her work--this movie really centers on the two things that make the Harry Potter books so outstanding:  story and characters.  The biggest scenes are not the one with CG effects or new imaginative animals (in fact, the ones that appear, such as giants and dragons and giant spiders and Cornish pixies have all been seen before), but the ones that complete the stories of all these people we've come to love over the years.  FINALLY, we get to hear Snape's story.  FINALLY, we discover Dumbledore's grand plan for Harry.  FINALLY, the obvious couple gets together.  FINALLY, the disrespected underdog has his big hero moment.  FINALLY... lots and lots of plot lines get tied together in a way that brings us to a very satisfied place about these characters that have been developing in our heads and in our hearts for over a decade.

And I have to say, I really like this movie because I can also see it as the Triumph of the Mothers.  When Hogwarts is preparing for attack, it isn't the Aurors or active leaders of the Order of the Phoenix (who have pretty much been men the whole way along, let's face it) who take charge, it is the "in loco parentis" grandmotherly-looking Minerva McGonagall.  It isn't the handsome and talented Sirius Black who defeats the horrible Bellatrix Lestrange, it is the frumpy, domestic, and usually sidelined Molly Weasley who battles Bellatrix to the death when she threatens Molly's only daughter.  And it is Narcissa Malfoy who helps set up Harry's surprising resurrection to his supporters at Hogwarts when she betrays Voldemort to ensure the protection of her son.

So this movie, like the book on which it is based, offers a lot of life lessons about love and friendship and loyalty and the things that are worth fighting for.  But I think it also offers one other key bit of advice:  Don't Mess with the Mamas!

Film Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1

My husband and I did finally get to go see the latest Harry Potter film recently.  I hadn't read any of the reviews, so I had no expectations.  My take:  I thought it was terrific.  Depressing, but terrific.   I'm going to discuss some of my favorite bits of the movie, so if you haven't seen it and don't want to read any spoilers, you might want to go read another article here and come back once you have seen it.  But before I spill the beans, I will say this:  I don't advise seeing this film unless you've read the books and/or seen the previous movies.  This movie is drawing characters from the previous six films with little or no explanation, and I'm not sure you would know what was going on if you aren't familiar with who these people are and what their backgrounds in the previous stories are.  Oh, and one other thing I will say for those who haven't seen the film yet--if you have a younger and/or more sensitive middle schooler, it may be too intense for them.  Our son didn't go see it with us, and after just the first few minutes, I was so glad he hadn't.  The film is very dark and can be quite scary, even for those who have read the books and know what is coming.  I don't think our son, who has read all the books multiple times, will be ready to see this film for quite a while.

I started getting teary from the very beginning, where Hermione was protecting her parents by changing their memories and removing her presence from their lives in a wonderfully visual way.  It was a small thing, but that is what I love about films....how they can take something that is mentioned in a fantastic book, but demonstrate it in a way I never imagined (and wasn't explained in the book) and make it so much more powerful than I ever thought when I was reading the book.  I love those kinds of moments in movies!

Another example like that was some scene where the heroes are wondering around and listening to the rebel radio, which says that the good news is that the list of deaths is so short today...and proceeds to read off name after name after name.  Again, that was not taken directly from the book, but made for a really emotional realization of the toll of this war between Voldemort and the wizard world.

One other scene that the film makers invented that I really liked was another early sequence where Harry is trying to sneak off to start his quest on his own, but he is discovered by Ron.  When questioned, Harry says he has to do this by himself because he doesn't want anyone else dying for him.  But Ron responds by informing Harry that if people die, they aren't dying for Harry--they are dying for something much, much bigger than him.   Then he tells Harry if he leaves alone, he won't last a day without Hermione's help and he might just as well surrender himself to Voldemort to be killed.  I thought that was a great scene--a wake up call for Harry, who does have a tendency to be the Savior/Martyr, and a wonderful moment for Ron to be something besides the always-encouraging sidekick (well, most of the time, anyways).

Another part that worked SO WELL on film was Hermione's reading of  "The Tale of the Three Brothers," which was depicted in a graphic cartoon as you hear Hermione's narration.  It was a very stark, stylized visual rendering of the story, and I thought it was very well done.

On the whole, though, the movie sticks very close to the book.  And it has to, because even in splitting it into two films, there is so much material packed into the final book that there is no time to linger over most of it.  So events zoom by, and are presented with minimal explanation and streamlined action, as the writer and director try to convey all the essentials into a family-friendly movie length time.

On the whole, I think they did a great job.  There are wonderful sections of the book that I hate to see left out, but I think they hit upon most of the crucial ones.  The main thing that is missing so far is the whole backstory about Dumbledore's history and life choices, which were crucial elements of the book, but may be hard to work into a movie format.  We'll see...

To be clear, I still prefer the books.  They just have so much more than the films can ever present.  But this movie, I think, is very true to the novel.  And it teaches valuable lessons about friendship, and perseverance, and courage, and doing the right thing, rather than the easy or convenient thing.   It deals with a number of middle school level themes, and so is a great resource for early adolescents who aren't too upset over some intense visual sequences.