The Hunger Games meets The Bachelor in The Selection by Kiera Cass

The Selection is the first in a series of books by Kiera Cass which chronicle Prince Maxon's task of choosing his future wife from among the 35 "Selected" young women from the various caste levels of a post WWIII country entitled Illea.

The caste system is extremely reminiscent of The Hunger Games. And well, Prince Maxon is the lucky "bachelor."

Among the "Selected" is the beautiful, redheaded, free spirit, America Singer. She certainly has baggage.  She doesn't want to leave her family behind. She certainly is not interested in sweet talking the Prince so fresh off the heartache of her break up with Aspen. She is definitely not looking for love.  But what choice does she have, but to go?  Especially when her family needs the monetary support she will receive from this kind of opportunity.

And so with this book, we, the collective book club of SSHS begin the saga. We begin this journey with Prince Maxon, Aspen, and the girl they both love, America Singer. According to initial reactions, students have raved that they adore the whole the juicy, intriguing, drawn out, emotionally draining adventure of this tale.

Team Jacob or Team Edward?
Team Peeta or Team Gale?

AND NOW

Team Maxon or Team Aspen????

There are, as always, plenty of opinions along the way.

We started our book club with a video from the author with some exciting announcements.

After that, each group had a large piece of paper and a character's name written on it.  They had to work with their group to formulate tweets and hash tags that would be "tweeted" by these characters.

Here are a few of the best ones...

Tweets from America...

Tweets from Aspen...

Tweets from Maxon...

After we had time to create and share some tweets, we had a tiara competition. Teams chose one person to be their model, and then they worked together to create a crown worthy of America Singer out of glitter, rhinestones, and pipe cleaners.

But as in The Selection, there could be but ONE winner...and she was a little camera shy!

I had no idea, how much fun it would be to crank the Miss America theme song up, and have a good ole time in what felt like our modern equivalent of the Women's Room in the book. This series has really caught the interest of my book club. We will read the second book The Elite for one of our October Book Clubs. The gorgeous covers on these books draw readers in. Thirty-five girls participated in this book club and their average score on the AR Test was 96%.  Many had to rush to Hastings or Amazon.com to go ahead and get the next installment in this delightful and decadent series.

Other FRIGHTENINGLY good Book Club options for October:

Until next time,

Amy Hutto, LMS

South Side High School