Television news during the War on Terror also played a role. And news coverage is something Sarah Darer Littman knows well. She isn’t just a YA writer; she’s also a newspaper columnist whose political column ran during the height of the war. Here, she uses her experiences to draw some alarming parallels between war in Panem and in our world that may change the way you think about not just Presidents Snow and Coin, but also Peeta, Gale, and even Katniss. Maybe it’s because of my political background, but when I read Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series the focus was never about Team Gale or Team Peeta the way it was for so many readers; the romance was a subplot. I majored in political science in college, and when I’m not writing books for teens, I’m a columnist for Hearst newspapers and a writer and blogger for various political websites, including CT News Junkie and My Left Nutmeg. To my mind, the Hunger Games trilogy was always more about “The System”—a political system that would not just allow but require children to fight to the death in televised games.
