Banned Books I Enjoyed #1

As part of Banned Books week, I will be doing a series of posts promoting books that I enjoyed but were challenged and/or banned. You may recognise them.

Title: The Hunger Games Series
Author: Suzanne Collins
Publisher: Scholastic
Read In: October 2009 - August 2010

Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning? In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before—and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

If you have not heard of The Hunger Games series you must be living under a rock. This series is everywhere at the moment thanks to the success of the movie adaptation. However not everyone is praising The Hunger Games.

In 2011 a parent at challenged The Hunger Games to the Goffston school board in New Hampshire. She claimed that the book gave her child, who was eleven, nightmares and the book could numb children to the effects of violence.

I agree that this is a violent book but it does not present violence in a good light. The people that are causing the violence are forced to do so by the Capitol, the antagonists of the story.

I do not believe that one parent has the right to ban a book from everyone elses child in the school district. That is the other children's parents decision. This book was not appropriate for this particular child but there may be older children in the school district for which this book is aimed at.

I absolutely loved this book and I cannot highly recommend it enough.

Becky