Trigger Warnings: Death, Teenagers Dying, Dystopias, Sexism
I'm still new to the Trigger Warning system, so if I've missed anything out, please say.
Preamble:
I've written the first two thirds of the somewhat epic-lengthed Hunger Games sprawl (I'm hesitating at the term review) more or less blind, with little reference to few secondary sources (as say in my line work work), but that's probably going to change. There's a single-page interview with Collins at the end of The Hunger Games and I'm likely going to start seeking other commentaries out, so I suspect when I swing around to Catching Fire, I'll be linking all over the place.
Again, I want to emphacise I do this because it's what I do. I genuinely enjoyed The Hunger Games and I do recommend you seek it out.
Partly because of Christmas, I've been thinking about the books I throw yearly at the small children (some of them now teens) in my extended family. One of girls has succumbed to the scourge that is Twilight and I've starting thinking about books, especially books I'm planning to make the younger generation read, in terms of what I want to tell them. I don't just want them to uncritically reflect the world as is, I want the books to inspire. More than anything, I don't want them to help undo the problematic assumptions the we make instead of reenforcing them. Maybe I'm wanting to much, but I'm looking back at the books I read when I was younger, the books that taught me and made me who I am. I'll probably write more about them individually and perhaps even revisit them on the blog.*
But I just want to say that I'm going through that right now, so I'm probably holding books (especially given it being a Young Adult book) to a rather high standard at the moment. That said, I do believe "it's a children's book" a very poor excuse for plot holes or simplisitic world view, especially when we've created Young Adult, which is supposed to have maturity and complexity. It is certainly sold as that when it comes to more "adult" themes of raciness.
But anyway, onwards.
