Banned Book Week: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. ISBN: 9780439023481.

So about a year ago, this book was challenged by a parent in New Hampshire (link under the Banned image). The complaint being that her daughter, in 7th grade at the time, was having nightmares and the children were being exploited, having to fight each other to the death and all for "entertainment" purposes. First of all, congratulations on having a child who isn't desensitized and therefore had a proper response to this novel via nightmares.  Second, while the Hunger Games may have devolved into a form of entertainment for people in the Capital, and a couple of other Sectors, for the most part it was a very political method of keeping an oppressed population in line.

And while I agree that the slaughter, or even exploitation of, children for entertainment is despicable, sweeping it under the rug will not prevent it from happening or negate its existence. All that will do is create an atmosphere, or at least a bubble, of ignorance of the issue. Which, even though I disagree with this approach, is the right of a parent. Parents do have the right to allow their child(ren) to live in ignorance of certain issues up until that child reaches the age of 18... although most children over 13 have figured out how to get into whatever the hell they want to get into anyway and so by that age your only option is to keep them locked in the basement. I think that by 7th grade, children should be aware that bad things happen to young people and could potentially happen to them. I recognize that those are not comforting thoughts for a child, and really uncomfortable thoughts for a parent, but unfortunately we don't live in a world that is safe for everyone. So, even if you live in the suburbs of New Hampshire and your daughter hasn't been exposed to child on child murder/brutality or exploitation of children by adults, it might be best that she is aware that it does in fact happen in the world.

There are several reasons for this: it will allow her to form an opinion about it; it will allow you, the parent, to inform the opinion that she forms about it; addressing the fears causing the nightmare will be much more effective than ignoring or preventing those fears; and perhaps she will become impassioned by the idea of ensuring that the children of the world, our world, aren't subjected to the same fate as fictional children in a land faraway and once upon a time.

Let's be realistic. Raising our children with limited exposure to violence is still a privilege. If it is something that concerns you, as a parent, so much that you don't want your children reading about it -- in a safe and secure situation, nonetheless -- perhaps you can do more to tackle the real life problem rather than addressing its fictional counterpart. Because really, the real violence and exploitation should be far more distressing to you as a moral being than the fact that someone wrote about characters in a book killing each other. Working on it with your child may even help with their nightmares... Just a thought.

LibsNote: Previous read, blog posts can be found here.
*Banned Graphic provided in part by Barefoot Liam Stock, with permission.



because children died for "entertainment" purposes.



Day 23: The Hunger Games

 The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  ISBN: 9780439023481.

I don't often stay up late to finish a book.  Even when I have trouble sleeping, I usually avoid reading because the very act seems to keep my brain too alert to drift off.  Instead, I usually turn on my computer and that alone seems to make me tired, probably because I most often associate it with work. 

Recently, I've found my sleep schedule off.  This occurs more frequently due to my unemployment. It's been difficult to prevent myself from sleeping in till noon and/or napping the day away, so occasionally I have to reset my schedule.  The Hunger Games kept me up last night.   I was already having difficulty sleeping, it was 10pm, and I hadn't finished my 100 pages for the day, which was fine, because I usually stay up until 11:30 or midnight.  But by the time I did finish those 100 pages, I was too wrapped up in the book to put it down.  I found myself reading the last page at somewhere around 4:46am. 

There were days in high school when I would do this all the time, particularly on the weekends.  I didn't have a whole lot of friends, and I just wasn't all that into partying, so unless I was going to a showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show I was probably at home on the weekends doing homework or reading.  And sadly, I can't remember the last book that kept me up late at night. 

There's something sort of special about that, though: participating in that kind of adventure of the page when everyone else is asleep.  Last night, the world was quiet and dark, and there I was, reading away with no fear of interruption.  Even the cat was off somewhere sleeping.  I was alone, curled up on my futon mattress on the floor.  Occasionally some nocturnal bird would chirp and I would wonder how close to dawn it was.  Stories somehow seem more real at night, and Collins' writing drew me into The Hunger Games in a way that a lesser novelist couldn't have.  The darkness seems to make it easier for me to connect with the character and the setting, as if the very intimacy of the situation makes me closer to whoever or whatever I'm with at the time.  The act of reading in the dark, the midnight hours, makes me feel like that book is mine alone and that it's the only world I have in that moment.

Day 22: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  ISBN: 9780439023481.

I'm still at the beginning of the book because I've been distracted recently.  I'm going to have to start running around like crazy because I managed to swing a second interview with that university in Tennessee.  I'm excited because it's my first professional interview with an academic institution (not counting ITT Tech).  I have to relearn all the stuff I forgot about cataloging because I had no real interest in being a catalog librarian, but a job is a job and I'll still be able to do reference at this place.  Not to mention there are suit pants that need to be tailored, nails to be taken care of, and my car could use a serious oil change.  On top of all this I landed an odd job working for a professor here at Bowling Green State University.  This has given me much needed cash for...well, things like my oil change.  So forgive me if my posts aren't as thought provoking over the next month or so, and if I switch to a weekly schedule, it means I'm employed and you should be happy for me.

Anyway, Katniss was describing how she collected food for her family from the forest.  I've never had to do this, although I enjoy being able to recognize a handful of plants (including poison ivy thanks to my somewhat recent brush with it...literally).  My fiance is also fairly quick to recognize almost anything local to Ohio and has a vast knowledge of things that are kept in the dark and grown in animal dung.  

It occurs to me that I don't necessarily have the knack for finding edible foods in the wild, but I do have a similar trait, which is remembering people's dietary preferences/habits.  This is a bizarre thing because my brain is normally the consistency of swiss cheese and you never know what's actually going to be retained.  Well, this is one of those things I happen to retain.  I suppose since we are a social species this is evolutionary necessary and important information, but it's the damnedest thing that I can remember that Joey is a vegetarian who doesn't eat honey, Sue is allergic to tomatoes, and Janet is on Weight Watchers.  It actually got to the point where at one job I was consulted anytime food was brought in for certain people so things could be left to the side, or a low sugar cake could be made for the diabetic, etc.

A strange glitch with this, uh, ability is that if dietary preferences are changed or I learn about them later, I'm slow to remember them.  For some reason, if I meet you within a week and I learn that you don't like cilantro that becomes a Major Point of Interest in what I remember about you.  In fact, I can forget your name and remember that you can't eat strawberries.  It really is kind of like a strange super power and I sort of wonder if anyone else does this, or if my brain is just wired funny.  I also wonder if it might have a more sinister background, and part of that is probably because I'm reading a book like The Hunger Games where people are trying to kill each other.

Maybe this ability to remember foods people can't eat was a way for people like me in primitive societies to knock off newcomers to the cave that they didn't like.  I mean sure there were probably some benefits to keeping the regulars healthy, but then why is it easier for me to remember it when I first meet people?  There's little advantage to remembering that Grandpa hates asparagus when the entire clan knows this, but if the new guy is a jerk and I know he can't eat peanuts I'd have the power to make his life a living hell at the least and possibly send him into anaphylactic shock if I really didn't like him.  I'm not saying I would ever do this, but why, why does my brain remember this stuff?  I like to ask these questions and try and figure out the biological/neurological/evolutionary advantage. I think it's important to question our own thought patterns and weird psychological phenomena.

So yeah, sorry about the kind of weird post, but I hope it was sort of entertaining and I was having fun thinking of different foods that kill people and what not.  Do you have any weird "things I seem to remember about people for no reason" abilities?  I'm interested, tell me.