Have you downloaded the official mobile game for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 yet? You can get it for free either from the AppStore or Google Play.

Game description:

Fire burns brighter in the dark… Katniss Everdeen has agreed to unify the districts of Panem against the Capitol. Help Katniss enlist other rebels in this Role Playing Card Collection Game that will immerse you in Panem’s unique districts. Rise up now and take back Panem from President Snow!

Overall the game is getting pretty good reviews–a rating of between 4 and 5 with thousands of people playing.

We’re excited to begin the first in our series of featured Hunger Games fans. Meet Hannah, pictured above doing her best “Katniss.”

Name- Hannah L.
Age- 13
State/country- Trenton,NS,Canada

Favorite Between Peeta and Gale - Peeta, but I don’t want it to be like twilight.

Why She Likes the Hunger Games – Josh is in it and it is a suspenseful novel,I just fell in love with it when I first read it. I read the trilogy in 3-4 days, I wouldn’t put them down.I have the pin and a black leather jacket, I sometimes wear my hair in a braid and I ordered a DWTC scarf on etsy.com.

Get more information on how to be a Featured Fan!

We know that there are Hunger Games fans out there even bigger than we are, and we would love to find them! Each week we are going to start featuring different Hunger Games Fans on our site. If you would like to be featured, please send the following to info@hungergamesfan.com:

• Name
• Age
• City/State/Country
• Whether you favor Peeta or Gale
• In 100 words or less why you love the Hunger Games. Things like how many times you have read the book or whether you own any Hunger Games merchandise.
• A picture we can use with your bio

We can’t wait to start hearing for you and begin our weekly feature. If a friend referred you to our site, tell us who they are so that we can feature them, too!

Hunger Games Bookmarks

In celebration of our account @HungerGameFan reaching 500 Twitter followers, as promised we are giving away a pair of Hunger Games bookmarks. These are official Hunger Games merchandise but are no longer being made because they were a part of the Mockingjay book release last year.

The winner of the contest will receive both of the brand new bookmarks, one with the Mockingjay on it and the other with the phrase “Down with the Capitol.” See below for the five ways that you can enter this Hunger Games contest.

To enter:

1) Leave a comment below telling why you are one of the biggest Hunger Games fans (one entry).

2) Follow us on Twitter and leave a comment below with your Twitter ID (@hungergamefan) (one entry).

3) Post on Twitter about the contest and leave a comment below with your Tweet (one entry).

4) Sign up for our newsletter on the side of the page and leave a comment below (e-mail will be verified) (one entry).

5) Blog about this contest or post the contest in your giveaway section and leave your link to the post below (two entries).

Drawing will take place October 26, 2011, at noon Eastern. Must be a US Resident, age 18 or older to enter. Winner will be notified via e-mail and have 24 hours to respond or a new winner will be selected.

Disclosure: Contest sponsored by www.hungergamesfan.com and is no way affiliated with Suzanne Collins, the Hunger Games, Scholastic or Lionsgate.

Thanks to Adam Spunberg and Savanna New for this terrific guest post about the Hunger Games Fireside Chats. We hope everyone will tune in!

We started Hunger Games Fireside Chat back in April after doing a series of articles for Picktainment (in conjunction with The Hob) about casting the first film. We’re obviously massive fans of the trilogy, and we loved the idea of bringing the fandom together on a weekly basis to talk about the books and the movies. There are so many podcasts out there, we had a strong to desire to create something truly unique, hence our live, unedited, collaborative format. In many ways, we’re more like a talk radio show than a traditional podcast. Every week, we feature a group of panelists representing the top Hunger Games fan sites and blogs on the web, and we involve fans by encouraging our listeners to use our hashtag — #HGFiresideChat — to chat amongst each other on Twitter during the live show.

We wanted to make our 25th episode special and different, so we decided to not bother with a schedule or agenda of any kind and go “unscripted.” We prepared a grab bag full of discussion prompts, questions, Crackpot Theories, What Ifs?, Would You Rathers?, and other topics, and just drew things out of the bag to talk about throughout the show. It was so much fun not knowing what to expect! We ended up discussing Haymitch’s love life, the size of Panem and the location of the arenas, quotes we hope make it into the first movie, and more!

We launched our official website a little over two weeks ago, and our excitement has yet to wane. It had been a long time coming, and we put a lot of hard work into it, so it’s been wonderful watching everyone respond so positively. We can’t thank Sam Cushion — who you may know as District Tribute — enough for helping us out with the design! We hope having our own site will enable us to grow along with the fandom and help new listeners learn more about us and explore all of our old episodes much more easily.

Every day I get at least one Google alert about a story comparing the Hunger Games trilogy to either the Harry Potter series or the Twilight saga. But can they really be compared? I talked to a couple of Young Adult experts and here is what they had to say:

“I think Hunger Games can be compared to Twilight or Harry Potter because they are all series that have attracted a large crossover YA audience. Serialized novels often have a better chance at acquiring a bigger readership than stand alone stories because they build buzz over time and with the release of each new installments, new readers are made aware of the series.

“I think The Hunger Games, Twilight and Harry Potter each appeal to us for different reasons; Harry Potter is a celebration of childhood, the imagination and the process of growing up while Twilight portrays how all consuming love can feel, especially the first time. I think the Hunger Games series appeals to us because it clearly defines who is good, who is bad and gives us someone to root for and also against.” Nina Lassam (Wattpad)

“I don’t think that Harry Potter and Hunger Games are comparable. Although Harry Potter turns quite dark in the end, it is still a very simplistic rendering of good versus evil. Sometimes Harry (or other essentially “good” characters) confronts evil within himself, but overall the theme remains the same. In the Hunger Games, the ideas are more complex from the very beginning, the situations and choices offered more life and death, and, conversely, the shades of grey more subtle. Is it a crime to steal to feed your family? What about pretending to be someone you are not to protect them? What about the questions of wholesale, societally accepted violence as entertainment, and what parallels do we have today? In Harry Potter, “Muggles” never have to deal with these issues and are essentially unwitting participants in a parallel universe (portrayed as rather stupid); in the Hunger Games, try as one might, there isn’t really an escape. Even the resistance fighters are swept up by questions of morality.

Additionally, I don’t see the characters evolving very much in Harry Potter, even as they age. They are still the same people they were in the final book as the first. In the Hunger Games, characters emerge from the third book with a new sobriety and understanding of the depth of the human experience, and the trilogy doesn’t cover the same period of time. A comparison can be made, but there are precious few similarities.” Suzannah Kolbeck (Executive Director of HoneyFern School)

I think both Nina and Suzannah bring up really good points. There are certainly similarities in the methods behind the book/movie releases but clearly major differences in the themes. You can also approach the “good” versus “evil” angles of the books from different viewpoints. What do you think? Can a comparison even be made between Harry Potter, Twilight, and the Hunger Games?

Thanks to Lucas Strong for this terrific guest post!

The Site:

Our obsession for the series started when i read the books and spread the “disease” to both of my cousins Kelly sararas (@kellysararas) and Shia Hayward (@shiiahayward). After we had read the books we decided to create a fanmade hunger games video. You can find it here ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiGoYHH0fPE ) This sparked a new found enjoyment for filming and directing on my part so we began filming more and more videos throughout 2010/2011. All of which you can find on our channel ( http://www.youtube.com/user/Strongifyable?feature=mhee ). This got each of us a lot of publicity and we became a large part of the hunger games fandom. We have been keeping updated on the movie news and posting it ourselves, earning us followers. We are so grateful for the attention and decided we would create a site for our videos and fan work. Along with some movie news of course. The site is released when @Storngifyable reaches 200 followers. along with the release of the site we will be giving away a hunger games brooch and a hunger games inspired pin set to two of @strongifyable’s followers.

The Pictures:

My long time friend, samantha Heaton (Not on twitter) has been participating in a high school course in photography. For her final assignment she was instructed to take a set of pictures that had a certain similarity to each other in black and white. In this case she chose the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins because she loves the books and the story they tell. She contacted Me (@Strongifyable) and our friend Lindsey steele (@lindz_ks) to be models in the shoot for her. As i have been a huge fan of the Hunger games since day one i could not refuse her offer. We got together in the middle of June and spent the Day taking the photos of Hunger Games Inspired Scenarios. Below i will post the url’s of the pictures along with some explanation to each one.

1. http://i53.tinypic.com/30xern5.jpg

This photo is starring @strongifyable (me) as Marvel, visciously murdering young Rue. Played By the photographers younger sibling (10 years old)

2. http://i51.tinypic.com/120nvxz.jpg

This Photo depicts Katniss (@lindz_ks) Giving the nightlock berries to Peeta (@strongifyable) in there last moment.

3. http://i54.tinypic.com/254viw6.jpg

This photo displays katniss (@lindz_ks) Looking up into the night sky to observe the death toll of that day in the arena. The pictures is supposed to deliver a feeling of suspense because of the feeling katniss must be having when she is hoping peeta’s face is not displayed in the sky.

4. http://i55.tinypic.com/20fwc39.jpg

This Picture Depicts Rue (Sarah Heaton, photographers younger sister) after all of the violence is over and katniss has placed the flowers around her head. The picture is supposed to deliver a feeling of relief that the pain has ended.

5. http://i52.tinypic.com/17g0gz.jpg

This picture displays Katniss (@lindz_ks) holding Rue’s (Younger sister) hand in district 12 before they have to bear the reaping.

6. http://i52.tinypic.com/15yg5zb.jpg

This final picture dipicts katniss (@lindz_ks) reaching into her quiver for an arrow, as she poises to attack an animal to feed her and peeta.