The author of the summer’s most anticipated children’s book thinks parents need to do a better job of exposing their kids to violence, said Rick Margolis in School Library Journal. Suzanne Collins’ Mockingjay is the final book in her highly readable Hunger Games trilogy, which takes place in a world where young kids are made to fight as gladiators—but rise up to fight for their own freedom. The series tackles many topics—government oppression, flesh-devouring mutants, young love—but one theme recurs. “For me, they’re absolutely, first and foremost, war stories,” Collins says. Kids today see plenty of virtual gore, but rarely learn the realities of combat. “It’s not comfortable for us to talk about, so we generally don’t,” she says. “If the whole concept of war were introduced to kids at an earlier age, we would have better dialogues going on about it.”
Collins’ own favorite childhood reading tended to be Greek mythology, said Tina Jordan in Entertainment Weekly. But she remembers falling in love with a quirky book about the siege of Leningrad, Jaap ter Haar’s Boris, and she learned plenty more from the firsthand accounts of her father, a Vietnam vet. “He felt that it was part of his responsibility to teach us, his children, about history and war,” she says. “He would discuss these things at a level that he thought we could understand and was acceptable for our age. But, really, he thought a lot was acceptable for our age, and I approach my books in the same way.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
'Good riddance to the televised presidential debate'Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Caitlin Clark the No. 1 pick in bullish WNBA DraftSpeed Read As expected, she went to the Indiana Fever
-
Today's political cartoons - April 16, 2024Cartoons Tuesday's cartoons - sleepyhead, little people, and more
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”