June 9, 2009
September 1st will see the release of Catching Fire the second book in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games Trilogy. It would be hard to overstate how much anticipation surrounds this book. Those lucky enough to have seen an advance reader have spoken with one voice, namely that "It's frickin awesome!" as a bookselling friend pronounced. I certainly agree. What the book industry wonders, of course, is how big a phenomenon it will be. A recent article Catching Fire Catches Fire notes that "For Catching Fire, the biggest obstacle to runaway sales may be parents who don't want their children reading about teens killing other people. That's the case for Lisa Crandall, manager of Booktenders' Secret Garden in Doylestown, Pa. She loved both The Hunger Games and Catching Fire—but won't let her 11-year-old son, Max, near them yet. "He could grow up feeling maybe that's the world he's going to live in," she says. "I don't want him to imagine children killing children." I wondered about the validity of that concern and took the opportunity to ask a class of local fifth graders who had read The Hunger Games together as a class, and who were wild for it, peppering me with questions I wasn't going to answer about Book 2. The conversation went like this. KB: (Makes silly graph showing "Harry Potter level" then "Twilight level" then "regular big release level") So how big will Catching Fire be? Student: As big as Harry Potter! 2nd Student: Bigger than Harry Potter! Whole class: Yeah! KB: (Private thought: 'cute but wrong') Okay so what is it that makes Hunger Games so awesome? 3rd Student: (Hand shoots right up) It has kids killing other kids! Whole class: Yeah!!! They had a great many other reasons too, but what really struck me was how perfectly unaffected they were by presumed adult concerns. The reason for this can only be that it matters very much how things are handled, and Hunger Games is a very moral book. Collins frames things in a way that brings forth excitement, interest, and thoughtfulness, without being unsettling. Yet another reason to be excited about September 1st. Here they are! Our weekly picks for the two best: two hardcover, two paperback, and two children's books. The very best new arrivals to leap out of the box and onto our shelves this week. Call or email us if you want more information on any of these titles, or to have us hold you a copy. Or stop in and check them out in person. We'd love to see you. Thanks as always for sharing your reading with us!
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