The Hunger Games Shelf

For the kid who read The Hunger Games in two days and now wants "something like that." Good. That kid just told you what school looks like this year. The series is on this shelf, all five books and the box set, and so is everything Suzanne Collins built it out of: the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, the Roman arena, Orwell's farm, Golding's island, and Lowry's quiet town where nobody is allowed to remember. Read the series, then read what it came from, and your child has done a semester of literature without anyone calling it that.

How to use it: let the kid read the novels on their own, fast, the way they want to. Then read the classics together, one a month, and talk. The Giver first, because it is short and lands hard at twelve. Animal Farm next. Lord of the Flies last, and only when they are ready for it. The instructional guide on this shelf gives you the discussion questions and the writing prompts so you are not inventing them at the kitchen table. The Greek myths and the Rome book are for the day your child asks "did she make all this up?" She did not.

Two more things: The Series Reader is the next shelf for a kid who reads this way, and the $49 map is where we build a whole year around what your child actually reads. Not sure this is the right shelf? Five questions will tell you.