Review of the Hunger Games series, with a little Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, and Twilight Thrown In

The popular media item I was most wrong about was The Pirates of the Caribbean movie. When I heard that Disney was going to make a movie based on a ride at one of its theme parks, I thought it was the stupidest idea I had ever heard. Even when I found out that Johnny Depp, whom I love love LOVE, was going to star, still, I was not a believer. But when I actually watched the movie, I thought it was GREAT for the kind of film it was. Fun, fantastic, swashbuckling action, and interesting, larger-than-life characters, most especially the one-of-a-kind Captain Jack Sparrow that Depp created. But it has some interesting meat as well--some valuable lessons amongst all the ghosts and pirates and young lovers and such. It was a perfect summer blockbuster film, and I admit I was completely wrong in my pre-judgements.

But my second most egregious error may be my previous dismissal of The Hunger Game series.

The premise of the book--that is, a bunch of teenagers who have to fight to the death for the amusement of the TV audience--sounded like yet another grim, post-apocalyptic YA novel filled with senseless violence (which to me, a perennially upbeat person my entire life, seems inexplicably popular to today’s teenagers). But I was wrong. Well, it is a grim, post-apocalyptic novel...now that I’ve read the whole series, I’m not convinced it should be classified for Young Adults, unless by that they mean college students. Most of all, however, it is violent--more violent as the books proceed--but the violence is not senseless at all. The violence teaches us a lot. It teaches us about war, and about power, and about coercion. It teaches us about human nature, and how really horrible people can be to one another...but also how wonderful and loving and heroic they can be as well.

Because as it turns out, the fighting between the teenagers is really just the appetizer. The entire series is more of a meditation on totalitarianism, a la Fahrenheit 451 or Nineteen Eighty-Four. However, it incorporates more modern aspects to it, such as the rise of reality television and the latest devices for warfare.

The series also kind of made me think of Harry Potter for grown-ups. Only instead of magical Hogwarts castles where the four houses competed in Quidditch and the House Cup, here we have the dystopic nation of Panen, where the citizens of the 12 Districts that remain of the United States compete simply to survive. And Voldemort, mean dude that he is for children’s literature, really can’t compare with the political leaders in the Hunger Games, who wipe out entire villages, schools, hospitals, or even a whole District, seemingly without a qualm. Because in the Hunger Games, they aren’t just messing around, trying to get rid of an elderly wizard and “the boy who lived.” In the Hunger Games, they are in all-out war.

So the Hunger Games books get high marks for realistically depicting what happens in war. And I think it is a valuable thing for young people to read. Again, I wouldn’t advise it for middle schoolers; that is, I think they could read it, but I don’t think they would GET it. But teenagers, college students, young graduates whose lives have basically been untouched by the multiple “wars” we are in and have been over the past 10-20 years, but where all the pain and suffering and destruction occurs only in foreign countries and among our paid military--this is a great wake-up call to how awful war really is. And one of the greatest questions raised, which runs through all the books, is who your enemy really is. That is not always an easy question to answer in a war.

HOWEVER....there is another side to the books.

War, and political coercion, and when and how to fight back, are definitely major themes of the series. But there is another backbone to the stories, and that (just like Harry Potter) is love. Yes, there is the love triangle, a la Twilight, except about ONE THOUSAND times better, since the characters are interesting and multi-dimensional, and they demonstrate their love through their actions, not sitting around moony-eyed whining about how they can’t live (or not live....well, you know what I mean) without the other, like the dippy lovers in the current soap opera that is Mary Worth..

OK, sorry about that. I just had to get that out of my system.

So there is a love triangle, but the choice is much more realistic (vampire versus werewolf...come on). Do I choose the one who loves me irrationally and unconditionally, even though I don’t think s/he really knows me? Or do I choose the one who knows all about me, particularly my dark side, to which s/he seems to draw me? Actually choosing a partner not just by how s/he makes you feel (ESPECIALLY when you are awash in adolescent hormones), but by the way s/he acts and by the kind of person you are when you are with that person--now THAT is a lesson about love. Again, I’m not sure even teenagers are ready to think that way, but I’m pretty sure middle schoolers aren’t.

And the wonderful thing of the book is that is not the only type of love explored. There is love for family and love for friends and love for team mates and love for colleagues that maybe even should be thought of as enemies. There is love for the earth and love for the animals. There is all kinds of love. And that, again, lifts this series above the many dystopic YA series there are out there.

So in this series, there is war, and there is love. And because it is war, and because it is NOT Harry Potter (as much as I loved that series), if you make it through the end of the series, characters that you love will die. Because that is the reality of war. And you will be shocked, and you will miss them, and you may even cry, but you will go on to finish the book, and continue to appreciate them even after they have disappeared from the text. Because that is the reality of love.

So if you are up to experience all that--I don’t know a better current YA series to read.

PS--If you want to see my responses to the first two books in the series, visit:
Book Review:  The Hunger Games
A Concrete Poem on Catching Fire

Celebrating the Freedom To Read

Today one of our local libraries had "Freedom To Read" events all day long in honor of Banned Books Week, a program spearheaded by the American Library Association to fight censorship of books in public libraries.  At our local event, people from the community read passages from their favorite books that have been challenged or banned from either school or community libraries.

This was an eye-opening event for me because while we hear occasionally about such things as families trying to remove the Harry Potter series from libraries because it promotes the occult, I thought that we had grown beyond quite so much focus on censorship.  However, the BBW produced a booklet of the books that, in 2009-2010,  people had challenged and, in many cases, have been successful in either restricting or banning completely from schools and libraries, and I was amazed to see how many books are still being disputed.  Some I'm not familiar with, but from the title alone, I could see how some people might have concerns (although they all seemed to be appropriate to me for an audience above the elementary level).  Some, however, I found unbelievable.   In Texas, one father objects to the Newbery Honors award winner The Egypt Game because it features "evil gods and black magic."  While libraries across the country are doing special programs in honor of the 50th anniversary of To Kill a Mockingbird, a school in Ontario removed the book because it uses "the N word."  A school in California has pulled The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary because it contains definitions of sexual activities.  But the worst of all to my mind--the schools in Virginia that agreed to drop The Diary of Anne Frank from their curriculum because it contained "sexual material and homosexual themes."

The library also had a book of the 100 most-frequently challenged, restricted, or banned books of all times.  Many of them I had heard complaints about, such as Catcher in the Rye, Fahrenheit 451, and the like.  But some of the most popular middle school writers and books were on the list, including Newbery winner A Wrinkle in Time ("can confuse children about good and evil and lists Jesus Christ in the same category as premier artists, philosophers, and scientists"), Junie B. Jones ("sassy behavior"), and Are You There, God?  It's Me, Margaret ("frank treatment of adolescent sexuality and religion").  More predictably, the Twilight series also made the list for its sexual content.  The one that really knocked me for a loop, though, was the attempt to ban Draw Me a Star by Eric Carle.  ERIC CARLE?  He of the torn painted tissue paper?  And the reason listed for the challenge was "sexual content and nude illustration."  ERIC CARLE???  It took me two libraries, but I finally tracked down a copy of the book.  There is one illustration of two naked people by a tree that I assume are supposed to be Adam and Eve, although the book does not say that.  And there are vague suggestions of male and female anatomy, although I doubt it is anything that the target audience (which should be around 3-6, given the simplicity of the language and story) would notice.

Anyway, it was all a great reminder for me of how much I take our libraries, our relatively open-minded community, and our American freedoms of expression for granted.

If you want to check out the list of book challenges over the past year for yourself, visit the ALA site.

Are Bella and Edward LITERALLY Warping Your Adolescent's Brain?

I found an interesting article in The Washington Post this weekend about a conference at Cambridge University that discussed whether the current trend towards darker themes in youth literature is actually changing teenagers' brains.  You can read it here:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/literature/experts-probe-how-twilight-and.html


This was particularly interesting to me because we have just completed a summer reading program where we read children's literature from the past 50 years in a decade-by-decade sequence.  We noticed how themes, topics, the way various ethnicities or disabilities were depicted, even the art styles, changed between 1960 and 2010.   But I, at least, never considered that the increased violence and adult themes in contemporary young adult literature might be physically altering brain development.


As one of my friends pointed out, classic literature that has been assigned reading for tweens and teens have all kinds of dark themes--murder, war, rape, etc.  But I think they are distinguishing here between "adult" literature--the assigned readings that remain a more intellectual occupation--to contemporary literature that adolescents read on their own with their peers and take in more emotionally as a guide for how they are supposed to be acting/thinking/feeling/dressing, etc.  


So, to look back at the 1960's, young adolescent girls wanted to be like Nancy Drew--smart, conservative, popular, somewhat of a risk-taker...She is an investigative heroine figure, but she also engages in idealized "normal" teenager behavior--has a nice boyfriend (although there is no sexual content at all, of course), dresses properly, does well in school (and uses her intelligence to solve mysteries), drives a red sports car.   Certainly a different role model than Bella, who is a depressed, obsessive, and much more romantic/sexual figure.  Same thing with boys with the 60's Hardy Boys or '50's Tom Swift.  Almost all the major characters in tween boy books these days, if they aren't vampires or werewolves or wizards or whatever, are much, MUCH more violent than in earlier eras (and the vampires and wizard and such are being violent as well).

Now I'm not arguing it necessarily changes adolescent brain synapses- I don't know about that one way or another.  But it is interesting to consider.  And it is interesting to note that Cambridge is having a serious conference on it.