Our first award goes to Suzanne Collins, author of MockingJay (Scholastic Press), the last book in the Hunger Games trilogy. In September 2008 Scholastic Press released the first book, The Hunger Games, and it has been on the New York Times Best Seller list for more than 60 weeks in a row. The Hunger Games was followed in September 2009 by Catching Fire. Suzanne’s latest book, Mockingjay, has continued the trend by catapulting to the number one spot on Amazon’s bestseller list just a few days after its release on August 24th.

However, the rampant success of the book had very little to do with our selection of Suzanne as this week’s winner. What really got us excited was the use flash games to captivate an audience. We hadn’t considered the book until people started talking about it on Twitter. A quick web search for Suzanne Collins lead us to her website and the message “Visit the Scholastic website for cool games and info! www.scholastic.com/underlandchronicals.” Within a few minutes we were hooked, chasing fireflies through Gnawers Labyrinth and birthing my own Fishenstein with the Creature Creator.

Mockingjay’s audience is the Young Adult (YA) market. This crossover demographic is composed of two groups: teens, and adults who like YA fiction. A study by Pew Internet published in 2009, shows that 73% of teens play games on a desktop or laptop computer. Likewise, many adults who read YA fiction do so because it re-connects them to the wonderment of childhood. By creating a Flash game that speaks to both populations, Suzanne Collins has not only shown that she understand her audience, but knows how to impassion it out of complacency.

Collins began her career in 1991 as a writer for Nickelodeon’s Emmy-Nominated Clarissa Explains It All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. Soon after she received a Writers Guild of America nomination for her work on the Christmas special, Santa, Baby. After meeting fellow children’s author James Proimos, Collins was inspired to write children’s books herself. From 2003 and 2007 she wrote the five books of the Underland Chronicles: Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods, Gregor and the Marks of Secret, and Gregor and the Code of Claw. Because of her success Collins was named one of Time magazine’s most influential people for 2010.

Without hesitation, Suzanne Collins and the team at Scholastic are this week’s innovators for creatively using technology to harness the imagination of childhood and convert someone who would have never picked up Mocking Jay into excited fan.

Our hat’s off to you Suzanne! We wish you much success.