One of my students had asked me several months ago if I had heard of this title, and I hadn't. So, last week, he handed it to me to read. I breezed through it pretty quickly last night. The Hunger Pains is a parody of the original Hunger Games, hopefully a pretty obvious connection :).
All of the characters have been given new names, sometimes similar sounding and sometimes not. Katniss Everdeen becomes Kantkiss Neverclean, Gale becomes Carol (since they are both girl names), etc. Kantkiss is pretty much the opposite of Katniss, except that she is still a tomboyish hunter, but she is pretty dumb and clueless about lots of things. Kantkiss is still from District 12, but their specialty is no longer mining---it is telemarketing. The other 11 districts also have specialties that are much different than the originals.
The biggest kick I got out of it was that the people of the Capital (where California used to be) speak with an accent that "used to be called Jamaican," so Effu (Effie) has a Jamaican accent, yet Cinnabon, Kantkiss's stylist, doesn't have a Jamaican accent. Cinnabon is never very prepared with her costumes and comes up with ridiculously pathetic costumes that Kantkiss loves.
Anything from the original that could have been made fun of has been....and even some things you wouldn't have thought to make fun of too! Overall, the parody was funny (but not necessarily kid-appropriate), but poorly written. I'm glad that I had the opportunity to read it, but this is not a title I will be revisiting.
Happy Reading!!
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