I received The Hunger Games books in the mail recently and was a bit "Whatever" about them because I just can't help but judge a book by its cover. In this case, it involved flames and a bird and it didn't look like something I would be into, but clearly I don't know myself at all, because when I decided to actually read them and I just couldn't stop. Like, reading-non-stop-even-while-walking-home-from-the-tram-stop non-stop. I read all three books in a week. Three! In a week! I have never in my life read that quickly or with that much enthusiasm, not even with Harry Potter, which is not to say that this series is better than Harry Potter (wash your mouth out!) but it sure is a page turner.*

Early next year the first book in the trilogy will be released as a major motion picture starring Jennifer Lawrence, Woody Harrelson, Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Banks, Lenny Kravitz and Liam Hemsworth.

At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards yesterday, Lawrence introduced a teaser for the film. It's less than a minute of footage, all of it involving Lawrence's character Katniss Everdeen running through a forest, dodging fire before firing her trademark bow and arrow at the series' very symbolic image of the mockingjay.

And here it is, the first teaser for Gary Ross's adaptation of Suzanne Collins' science fiction trilogy, The Hunger Games:





For those of you not yet swallowed up by the books, The Hunger Games is set in a not-too-distant dystopian future and centers on a young girl who joins a survival contest in order to save her community. In it, the Hunger Games themselves are an annual fight to the death aired on live TV. Each year the Capitol forces its twelve enslaved districts to participate by sending one girl and one boy from their district. When Katniss Everdeen's little sister is chosen in the lottery, Katniss volunteers to take her place, forcing her to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love in order to win the games and return home. It's more amazing that you'd think.


*it also helps that the font is big and that I'm all about teen fiction.