'Remake' posits more than the author directly confronts

Remake by Ilima Todd (2014) is reminiscent of the Hunger Games trilogy in many ways. There is a teenage female narrator in a dystopian society that blends high- and low-tech and is designed to prevent her escape; her two male love interests, both of whom are devoted to her; and a populace with the ability to request that their skin be permanently dyed pink or green and that they have dinosaur horns installed on their foreheads. All of this is presented by a writer with a direct, spare use of English, like a YA Hemingway.

In this society, human infants are reared in "batches" apart from any concept of family, and they are given hormone blockers to prevent sexual development. In their late teens, without any counseling, they are asked to give decisive answers to questions that will determine the rest of their lives. Chiefly, they must pick a profession, a name, and a gender. The last decision comes in two options: either they will have their hormone blockers removed so that their bodies will develop sexually on their own, or they may request additional hormonal and surgical intervention so that they may become a member of the "other" gender. (It is never explained what characterizes the genders of "man" and "woman" in this particular society, especially since there is no reproductive family structure; how or why someone's physical sex is supposed to correlate with that social role; nor why the government is so anxious to ensure that people conform physically to the gender role they choose for themselves.)

In the book, if a person chooses continued intervention to change their sex, their blockers are made permanent via an implant. This is not a medically accurate scenario. Someone receiving the sex hormones of the "opposite" sex would not need or want hormone blockers anymore, and it would be especially unnecessary if the surgeries – left unspecified in this book – included the removal of the glands that produce hormones.

The novel's premise raises a number of questions that go unanswered. Why must all the decisions be made at the same time? Why at a particular age? (What does a pre-pubescent 17-year-old deliberately raised in ignorance about many sexual matters know about their gender identity that, say, a pre-pubescent 11-year-old does not?) Is the decision day just a matter of convenience for the state, so that batches of humans vote on the same day and get it over with and don't drag out the decision process for years? And is the seemingly late hour of choice deliberate because the state wishes to keep the teenagers behaving in a childlike manner for as long as possible because they are more compliant that way? What happens to intersex people, those who do not – or will not, when allowed their natural hormones – neatly fit either the male or female category? (They are not mentioned in the book.) Why does the state want anyone to have sex hormones at all, given that only specially designated people are allowed to reproduce anyway? If they just want to assign gender roles, why can't they assign those in the same way they assign professions? Why does it require hormones to undergird the gender roles?

Finally, one might point out (although the author certainly does not) that this particular dystopian control system not only screws with the cisgender/heterosexual framework (which I think she is implying ought to be normative) but also redefines what it would mean to be transgender or otherwise queer. In other words, if the state messes with children's hormones and then suddenly forces them to make a permanent choice about their hormonal and anatomical future which probably does not include the right to reproduce, then nobody is given the opportunity to get in touch with what the reader is probably predisposed to think of as a true self: Nobody meaning not straight people and not queer people. Everyone's sense of authentic self is frustrated, if "authenticity" is understood as something mostly private and mostly uncorruptible by outside coercion.

In this scenario:

• The question of gender does not arise organically within the self and isn't a lifelong exploration, but is posed by the state as a bureaucratic matter and is decided once and for all.
• The question of sexuality does not come with the assumption that gender is a given, but is tied to the looming possibility that one's gender will need to change for reasons that are not entirely one's own.
• There is no such thing as being straight or queer. Ultimately there are only those who rebel against state power and those who don't. It is a different kind of binary. I think readers would get more out of the book if this were made explicit, but I don't think that is where the author intended to go.

One might suggest that the book is an allegory and that the gender-change premise is only a symbol within the allegory. On this interpretation, the author expresses neither complaint nor praise for gender reassignment of the sort that real transgender people really go through, because the message about gender-change isn't intended to be imported quite so literally back to the home planet. This would, however, be a tough argument to make. First of all, if there is a broader allegory, what is it and what are its component symbols? If this book isn't a dig at queer people, what is it? If it's just an indictment of tyranny in general, why are transsexual kids (aside from eugenics) the only symptoms of tyranny in the story?

A quarter of the way through the novel, the heroine is exposed to an alternate society, seemingly very much like Hawaii, where people live freely in family units. This Margaret Mead observes their behavior and asks the "What are sexual norms?" questions. One of the individuals she encounters in the free society complains about the "awful surgeries" perpetrated by the heroine's native dystopia against its inhabitants.

Halfway through the novel, she discovers a copy of the Bible – although no character's religion is ever identified – and she reads about the creation of Adam and Eve. This leads to a brief dialogue about marriage and babies. (Note that the novel's publisher, Shadow Mountain, produces non-religious books that "reflect the values espoused by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.")

The heroine is initially unsure about whether she wants to develop naturally as a female or change to male since she doesn't see any particular meaning or advantage to either. Her indifference is central to the novel. She only begins to form an opinion when she gets kissed by a boy, at which juncture she says to herself: "Today, it feels really good to be a girl." (No, she does not pick the name Cinderella.) When one of her suitors flirts with her by drawing a picture of her that imagines her hugely pregnant (hey, whatever works), she reflects that childbirth would be "worth it" because of "how absolutely wonderful and perfect in every way" her suitor's baby brother is. Later, she alludes to "a smoothing, sharpening, cutting away and building – not of my body, but of my spirit" and praises a transition of "my character, my strengths, my fears and devotion."

Adding to the biology-is-destiny reading, the Goodreads ad for the book bears the question: "Who was she born to be?"

The problem in this dystopia, as the author appears to want us to understand, is that the state is sterilizing almost everyone and furthermore is allowing people to choose a physical sex that is different from the one they were born with, a medical intervention which somehow (of course it is not explained how) undercuts the character of the person they were born to be. But is this really the problem? One might reasonably ask: If the smoothing and sharpening of the spirit occurs independently of physical changes, then why does it matter if someone wants to change their physical sex? Especially if they are going to be sterilized anyway? And might there be people who would be content to choose sterilization, if allowed the choice, because their destiny is not to be parents? There is certainly something wrong with state coercion and secrecy about matters concerning the bodies of children and adults, but the author hasn't convincingly pinned the problem. She seems to be arguing that a large part of the social problem is that people are allowed to choose transsexuality. The real problem in this fictional society looks like totalitarianism, not transsexuality.

It would have been interesting – though a very different book – to explore a range of reactions of different characters to the question of what gender they will select and the underlying reasons for those feelings. A deeper way of pushing this would be to ask at what point on the spectrum of conviction or discomfort with one's gender would one take the "harder" route of hormonal and surgical intervention? Furthermore, is that route indeed significantly harder in a society where the state has already given everyone hormonal intervention since childhood and will continue to provide related services for free, both of which make a "sex change" seem like a default choice or a benefit; where the state prompts everyone with the question, in case they don't raise the question themselves; and where roughly half the people are doing it?

The questions that the author or publisher wants readers to ask are listed as possible discussion points at the end of the book. These include: "Do you think there’s more to being male or female than the obvious physical differences? If so, what? Are these traits learned or inherent? Can artificial hormones change this, or is gender a part of who you are no matter what you alter?" Also, as the oppressive state allows its teenagers "the freedom to choose whatever they want," readers are supposed to ask, "What are the dangers of having no consequences for our actions?" The "no consequences" part was not obviously illustrated in the story. To the contrary, the teenagers were being forced to make life-changing decisions that had significant consequences that they were not allowed to go back and revise. Maybe this is an allusion to the assumption that they will all be infertile and can have no-strings sex. But there were consequences to this social arrangement – they didn't have families, for one thing. If anyone was truly consequence-free, it was the dystopian schemers-in-power, not the hapless inhabitants. An alternative dissenting argument could be made that the people in the free society were less bound to consequences because they had the possibility of democratically establishing their norms and deciding what the consequences would be, as contrasted with the people in the dystopia who had no choice at all. Overall, it's not obvious who it is who enjoys "no consequences," and it seems that this fear trope appears in its usual political context to dredge up concern that somewhere a queer person is going around making free choices and no one is stopping them. This is not explicitly part of the book, but it can be suggested by the book's context in what we know about our real world.

This fictional world is limited in its possibilities because it points to large gaps of social and psychological understanding that the author does not seem willing to make explicit and explore. It's unclear who would be the ideal reader, aside from a cisgender child who wants a literary reference to help them articulate why they feel uncomfortable around a transgender child and then to feel smug about their judgement, or maybe a transgender child who has difficulty deciding whether to transition and who finds strength in the mythological implication that they'll be more likely to be kissed by a soulmate if they don't transition and if they instead channel their bravery into a sexually normative endeavor. Such people exist, but accommodating these desires is sad.

It would be good to see this fictional world resurrected in fan-fic from a transgender perspective. We are more likely instead to see a sequel of Remake, as many plot elements were left untied.

What a 'Mockingjay' gives up: Sacrifice in the 'Hunger Games' trilogy

"The Hunger Games," a fantasy trilogy written by Suzanne Collins, begins with the sacrifice of children. The heroine also learns the meaning of voluntary sacrifice.

Originally posted to Helium Network on June 30, 2013.

"The Hunger Games," a fantasy trilogy written by Suzanne Collins, begins with the sacrifice of a couple dozen children. With varying levels of training as fighters, they are dumped into an arena with instructions to kill each other. The last one standing will “win.” It is part of their cultural expectation growing up, as the state reenacts the games annually: different year, different children chosen by lottery to be sacrificed. Some families whose children are not selected nevertheless prove themselves actively willing to risk the sacrifice; they agree to enter their children’s names multiple times in the lottery in exchange for extra food rations.

In the first book, "The Hunger Games," the heroine and narrator, Katniss, enters the arena on the premise of an additional, deliberate sacrifice: her sister has been selected in the lottery, and she offers to take her sister’s place. Once in the arena, Katniss must kill people whom she would, in other circumstances, have nothing personal against. This moral concession to circumstances is another sacrifice for her. She must form alliances with people she does not especially like, and in particular, she discovers that she must spark a romance (at least for the audience’s benefit) to stay alive. The boy truly falls in love with her, and at one point, he drops his weapon, signaling his willingness to be killed rather than to kill her, as only one of them is allowed to win. The moment at which the Games end hinges on their own threatened ultimate sacrifice that goes a step beyond this gesture of surrender.

It is no surprise that Katniss survives the Hunger Games (else, how could she narrate the story?). In the second book, "Catching Fire," she is forced to persist with the illusion of a romance, and she must enter the arena to fight again. Every detail of her life and death seems controlled by the state. Yet there are some positive aspects to these sacrifices. One individual follows her example, volunteering to take another’s place in the arena. Katniss herself decides that resolving to keep another person alive in the arena and giving up hope of her own survival is a worthwhile sacrifice that will give her something meaningful to fight for. She even gives up the opportunity to run away with someone who is interested in her, as his elopement plans do not include the rescue of anyone else Katniss cares about.

In the third book, "Mockingjay," Katniss’s ideals enlarge. Her life is no longer defined by the possibility that she might sacrifice herself for only one person, and she no longer assumes that the existing political order is an eternal given. She grows to be an icon as well as an active fighter in a movement to overthrow the tyrannical government. To be good soldiers, she and her comrades often think of themselves as willing to sacrifice themselves for each other, but this is primarily a mental strategy that keeps their task psychologically manageable and that reinforces their loyalty to each other. They are actually fighting with the possibility that they could sacrifice themselves for the cause. They don’t want just to survive the Hunger Games or to avoid the wrath of the ruler. They want to live in a world where everyone is free from the fear of cruelty and tyranny.

At times, Katniss is frustrated with belonging to the human race, since, as she puts it, “something is significantly wrong with a creature that sacrifices its children’s lives to settle its differences.” This is sacrifice of a negative kind: the sacrifice of victims who do not consent. On her journey, however, Katniss also learns about voluntary sacrifices and makes many of her own. She learns that the full meaning of giving up a person to the enemy’s calculated plans or to the ravages of war depends on how much she cares about that person and how much she feels she owes them. She learns, furthermore, that taking on the responsibility of serving as the symbol of a rebellion – the "Mockingjay" – means letting go of most of one's private concerns and beginning to make choices for the welfare of a nation.

How the 'Hunger Games' heroine learns to kill and to regret killing

Unpacking the meaning of the violence in 'The Hunger Games' is key to understanding the story and the depth of the characters.

Article originally posted to Helium Network on June 30, 2013.

Violence is a dominant theme in the "Hunger Games" trilogy. Author Suzanne Collins creates a fantasy world in which the teenage heroine, and everyone around her, suffers from chronic violence on multiple levels, both physical and psychological. Unpacking these different types of violence and the characters’ responses is key to understanding the story and the depth of the characters.

When the father of Katniss, the heroine, died in a mine explosion when Katniss was eleven years old, “there was nothing even to bury.” Her family lives in a society where stealing is punishable by death, capital punishment being best understood in this context as a kind of violence wielded by the state. The threat of being called by lottery to fight to the death in an arena hangs over the head of every child. Families who live in wealthier areas train their children in martial arts, but when Katniss is called to the arena as the first book opens, she has only her self-taught skill with a bow and arrow (gained at great personal risk by illegally hunting to provide food for her family), and she cannot be sure that she will be provided with this type of weapon when she enters the arena. Katniss knows it will be easier to kill other children if she can dehumanize them and pretend she’s targeting game animals.

To maximize the entertainment value for the viewing public, the children are provided with interesting tools with which they think of innovative ways to kill each other. When Katniss is stuck in a tree, she is nevertheless able to dump an especially venomous bees’ nest onto her pursuers below. She says “technically I’d get credited” for killing two people by this maneuver, but she feels somewhat detached from the consequences of the action. She is more troubled by a different kill, who was “the first person I knew would die because of my actions." Later, in the second book, "Catching Fire", she is disturbed to learn the name of one of the people she killed. It was easier for her not to have that human connection.

In "Catching Fire", Katniss comes to learn more than she ever wanted to know about the cruelty and manipulation perpetrated by the ruler of the land. She has to tell her friend, Gale, that “President Snow personally threatened to have you killed.” In reply, the teenager gives “no real show of fear or astonishment.” He simply asks who else is on the hit list and what they need to do to avoid their fate.

When she enters the arena a second time, Katniss already knows that, regardless of what she feels for other victors, “all of them must die” – as she herself must die – “if I’m to save Peeta,” one of her friends and love interests. However, anticipating and contributing to the deaths of others is difficult after alliances are built. These alliances are supposed to be temporary, because, after a certain point, every person is in the game for himself or herself, as there can only be one victor. But Katniss is troubled by the prospect of harming those who have only recently saved her life and Peeta’s. She has a strong sense of loyalty that tempers her willingness to use violence. She also is attuned to the idea of sacrifice.

The greatest act of violence, solely measured by the number of casualties, must be the government’s annihilation of Katniss and Peeta’s home district. In the third book, "Mockingjay", there is a strong people’s rebellion against the government in response to this offense. Peeta makes the first-ever truthful, personal statement on state-controlled television about what it’s like to fight in the arena: “It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are.” (Katniss is also personally familiar with “the aftermath of killing a person…how they never leave you.”) Soon afterward, television is in the hands of the rebels, and Katniss makes the first-ever televised statement against the government.

"Mockingjay" reflects upon the proper use of violence in justified rebellions and in the rules of war, with the aim of minimizing casualties, even on the enemy side. Katniss’s childhood friend Gale doesn’t see anything wrong with luring bystanders into an area that is about to be bombed or with annihilating large areas without giving people a chance to identify themselves and to surrender. Katniss, on the other hand, while possessing a fire for vengeance, has no liking for permanent war. “We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now our numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous,” she worries. “Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that – what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?”

The "Hunger Games" trilogy explores violence in different scenarios. It examines the reasons the powerful and the powerless use violence to achieve their goals. The novels implicitly accept that there are certain scenarios where violence may be necessary for the otherwise powerless and oppressed to remain alive, but they leave a gaping question about whether all-out war can ever be justified or will ever be productive.

Image by: Wikimedia Commons user 'Rama' © 'Free software' under CeCILL (www.cecill.info)

The struggle for power in 'The Hunger Games' trilogy by Suzanne Collins

In the "Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins, the teenage heroine and narrator Katniss comes to grips with the power that the state wields over her life.

In the "Hunger Games" trilogy by Suzanne Collins, the teenage heroine and narrator Katniss comes to grips with the power that the state wields over her life. The state has no qualms about killing its own citizens, including children, in psychologically damaging ways. The state expresses no concern about fairness. Growing up, Katniss learns that “power” is the ability to squash someone like a bug. Her coming-of-age journey is about discovering her own power and the power of the masses to rise up.

In the first book, "The Hunger Games," she looks out for her mother and sister’s welfare but acknowledges that she’s "powerless against the reaping" – that is, the lottery that could call her sister into an arena to fight to the death as a form of entertainment for the state’s wealthier classes and as a method of subduing the rest of the population. The game "is the Capitol's way of reminding us how totally we are at their mercy." It is Katniss, not her sister, who ultimately winds up in the arena. Katniss is clear that “it's the Capitol I hate, for doing this to all of us,” not her fellow condemned tributes who are forced to slay each other. She believes that, if she survives, she doesn’t want to marry or bring children into this sort of world. In this situation, she says, "I feel my impotence. There's no way to take revenge on the Capitol. Is there?"

In the second book, "Catching Fire", Katniss must contend with having accidentally sparked a rebel movement. The cruel president wants words with her. Katniss suggests to him that, if her spontaneous, clever actions threaten the Capitol, then the Capitol “must be very fragile.” The president responds: "It is fragile, but not in the way that you suppose." The meaning of this isn’t immediately apparent, but he is referring to the Capitol’s derivation of its wealth from exploiting the poorer districts. If the districts were to rebel against the existing order, the Capitol would collapse economically. He demands that Katniss distract the public from the rebellion she has inadvertently started by pretending to be a silly girl in love. He wants her to provide an alternate interpretation of her actions in the arena: she is to say that she was motivated by personal passion, not by political beliefs. He does not make his agenda quite this explicit, but Katniss gets the idea. She knows she must do as he says.

The state uses violence, swiftly and publicly, to make its points. After her friend Gale is publicly whipped, she reports that “most of the square has emptied, fear getting the better of compassion. But after what just happened, I can’t blame anyone.” Katniss is not convinced that, even if she complies with the president’s orders and marries her ostensible fiancé, Peeta, that she and Peeta (and perhaps Gale and everyone she knows) won’t be killed anyway. She must wear a prescribed wedding dress that may have “power” to “manipulate the crowd.” But what will happen to her when she is no longer useful to the president as part of his televised entertainments?

The police force known as the Peacekeepers attempt to kill her or at least contain her with an electric fence. Luckily, she manages to sneak out of it. She knows she could be arrested for any reason, “based on past crimes,” which include subsistence hunting, “but maybe he has to have something really irrefutable to do it, now that I’m a victor.” In other words, Katniss feels her power rising. Having survived the Hunger Games and gained the status of a victor, she is a public figure. She begins merely as a celebrity. If the state arrests her for no reason, she may become a symbol, inflaming a rebellion. This status gives her bargaining power.

Information is also presented as a kind of power. In this story, the useful information regards how the state is attempting to corner and kill the rebels, including through hostile people who may appear to be individually motivated but whose fundamental reason for violence traces back to the fact that they live in an oppressive state. One of the most dangerous mistakes is to misjudge someone’s true loyalties or intentions.

In the third book, "Mockingjay", the rebels have joined an underground society to stay alive. They talk about forming a democracy, but for the moment the social system is based on precise control of everyone’s diet and daily schedule. When Katniss sees someone bruised, she remembers “how impotent I am.” Yet this sensation is turned on its head when she realizes that an up-and-coming leader must “publicly remind her people that I am not in control.” As a symbol of a revolution, “I have a kind of power I never knew I possessed,” she thinks. This enables her to make a public statement in favor of the rebels declaring “freedom” from the Capitol.

The Hunger Games trilogy is about the state having the power to decide who will be permitted to eke out survival and who will meet a precisely predetermined demise. It is about an awakening that life could be different and that individuals can have power to change the political situation. The uprising is not without violence, and the understanding of power within the story generally includes the capacity to physically defend oneself or to ally with someone who can.

Article originally posted to Helium Network on July 1, 2013.

'Hunger Games' based on the Minotaur legend: A review of the first book in the Hunger Games trilogy

Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games is a brilliant fantasy about teenagers forced by the state to kill each other.

The theme is plausibly drawn from the Greek legend of the Minotaur, a mythical beast caged inside a labyrinth. The Minotaur was fed adolescent human beings, seven boys and seven girls, sent from Athens every year as tribute to the King of Crete.

In the Hunger Games twist on this ancient motif, twelve boys and twelve girls are demanded as annual tributes by the Capitol of the land of Panem representing its twelve districts. Those sent are chosen by lottery. They are thrown into an unforgiving outdoor arena from which twenty-three must be removed as corpses and only one may leave alive. While in the arena, they are given meager food rations, inadequate survival gear, and simple weapons to encourage them to kill each other in hand-to-hand combat. The Capitol televises the "games" over a period of several days and requires the districts to treat it as an annual celebration.

The Hunger Games series was published as a trilogy for young adults: The Hunger Games (2008), Catching Fire (2009), and Mockingjay (2010). The narrator is sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen.  She is one of the tributes, and the fact that she is narrating the story — in present tense — strongly hints as to who the winner of the Games might be.

Because this is a classic story line with a diabolical twist, every writer wants a chance to describe the plot, which is undoubtedly part of the reason The Hunger Games received so much media attention when the movie came to theaters in March 2012. In that regard it shares something in common with Life of Pi (2001), an award-winning fantasy novel that reviewers gleefully cheered for being about a sixteen-year-old Indian boy named Pi Patel who was stranded at sea in a lifeboat with a hungry tiger named Richard Parker. Sometimes the very premise of a book is its own endorsement.

The Hunger Games' land of Panem is set in a future era on the North American continent. In some ways it is slightly more technologically advanced than our current society. The inhabitants are able to live-broadcast the Games as a reality television show, aided by tracking devices implanted in the tributes' bodies, and are mysteriously able to capture even quiet conversations in the video. They can nearly instantaneously send gifts to the tributes by remote-controlled parachutes and can quickly remove corpses by hovercraft. They control the outdoor conditions — the terrain and possibly the weather — to a certain extent. They have bioengineered several dangerous, even demonic, new species.

Part of the Hunger Games' literary magic is that these technologies are simply given as facts about the world. There is no attempt, as there would be in "hard science fiction," to explain how any of these technologies work. Perhaps this is omitted because the young narrator would not be expected to find it a matter of concern.

In other ways, however, Panem's culture is primitive. There is not enough food for everyone so many poor people starve to death. Some, like the heroine Katniss, hunt with a bow and arrow if they are lucky enough to have such a tool, or more commonly with knives. There are land mines, but no mention of the existence of guns; most violence is up close and personal. Nor is there any mention of cell phones or personal computers. At school — Katniss's district is located over the land formerly known as Appalachia — they are mostly taught about coal.

The society also seems to be free of religion, at least as Katniss portrays it. Even when facing death, no one ever references a belief in a higher power. The grinding poverty does not seem to generate any kind of communal organization to provide material or inspirational support. The concept of religion seems unknown. The most heavily ritualized aspect of their society is the Hunger Games itself which is run by the state.

This odd premise is reminiscent of the reality show "Survivor," which first aired in the United States in 2000, in which contestants successively vote each other off an island wilderness until only one person remains, a format that naturally inspires them to form alliances early on and later to fend for themselves against their former teammates. As for the fictional land of Panem where the Hunger Games television show proceeds without the full consent of the participants and is a national fixation, it evokes the movie "The Truman Show" (1998). The use of a lottery to mark innocent people for death recalls Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" (1948). The violent society where children are the main agents must inevitably spur references to William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" (1954) and Stephen King's "Children of the Corn" (1977).

The series is enormously popular with teenagers. Their interest in the books disturbs some adults because the subject matter is so violent, but the reasons for the books' appeal are clear.


Anyone reading such a story asks: How would I react in this situation? Katniss has known all her life that being called to serve as a "tribute" is a possibility, even a likelihood for her.  She wastes no time feeling scared, engaging in panicky behavior, composing goodbye messages, or pondering abstract questions. She simply does what has to be done. Her lack of introspection and her inhibited emotional range does come back to bite her later, however, indirectly setting the stage for a sequel.

Insofar as there is an interpersonal core to the story, children are likely roped in because it is so obvious to the reader that the boy who professes love to Katniss is sincere, while Katniss erroneously persists in believing he is faking. The reader feels drawn into the story because they know something the narrator doesn't. Katniss may be near-invincible with a bow and arrow but her self-awareness is flawed.

Although adults may find the drama partially ruined by the author's careful explanations of crucial elements, this is presented on the right level for kids. For example, Katniss, accustomed to killing animals, says of her impending role as a gladiator, "The awful thing is that if I can forget they're people, it will be no different at all." This line might be gratuitous if the story were written for adults who could be expected to draw the connection between hunting animals and hunting people. For a child, however, this book could be an eye-opening first exposure to the concept that people have to "dehumanize" each other to be capable of systematic violence toward each other. As another example, Katniss sometimes asks herself questions like "Is he saving that information [about my skill with a bow and arrow] because he knows it's all that keeps him alive? Is he still pretending to love me for the audience?  What is going on in his head?" Again, experienced readers should already be attentive to the mysteries of other characters' minds, but newer readers may appreciate that the problems of these mysteries are made so explicit for them.

Finally, Katniss's strength and resilience may be inspiring to people at a vulnerable young age. After all, Rollo May observed in Power and Innocence that "there seems to be inherent in human life an urge to get over innocence. Is this related, in some curious way, to the urge to get beyond the age when we can be so easily sacrificed?"

From a thirty-something childless guy: Cool parents let their kids read this book.

This article was originally published to Helium Network on April 1, 2012.