This collection of essays about The Hunger Games was an excellent way to follow my five-day binge spent reading the entire series. Everything in this book either brings elements I was aware of into sharp focus or reveals new themes and interpretations to me. With each essay, though, I responded with variations of “Yes! Exactly! YES!”
Favourite essays include:
- Team Katniss, which questions the whole Team Peeta/Team Gale romance subplot and opts for Team Katniss, The Girl Who Was Compassionate, by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
- Your Heart Is A Weapon the Size of Your Fist by Mary Borsellino, examining love as a political act
- Carrie Ryan’s Panem at Circenses, with its look at reality TV and The Hunger Games
- learning about trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in Blythe Woolston’s Bent, Shattered and Mended
- The Politics of Mockinjay by Sarah Darer Littman, which I found particularly resonant with the lines it draws between current world politics, the packaging of war footage as entertainment and the political tactics of Panem
- Community in the Face of Tyranny, in which Bree Despain touches on a theme I felt but did not articulate in my original reading.
But this are just my favourites in a collection filled with intelligent, thoughtful and well written insights into this superb trilogy.
Read another review of this essay collection at Bookmarked.
Buy The Girl Who Was on Fire: Your Favorite Authors on Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games Trilogy
