New Release
The Ballad of Songbirds
and Snakes
Ambition will fuel him.
Competition will drive him.
But power has its price.
It is the morning of the reaping that will kick off the tenth annual Hunger Games. In the Capitol, eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow is preparing for his one shot at glory as a mentor in the Games. The once-mighty house of Snow has fallen on hard times, its fate hanging on the slender chance that Coriolanus will be able to outcharm, outwit, and outmaneuver his fellow students to mentor the winning tribute.
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Hi! Thanks for visiting my website. Here’s a picture of me with a rat in Central Park. If you’ve read my fantasy series, The Underland Chronicles, you will have a clue as to why I chose this photo. If not, you may want to click around and find out a little more about my books. Or visit the Scholastic website for cool games and info!
Suzanne Collins
Complete Series
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games trilogy takes place in an unspecified future time, in the dystopian, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, located in North America. The country consists of a wealthy Capitol city, located in the Rocky Mountains, surrounded by twelve (originally thirteen) poorer districts ruled by the Capitol. The Capitol is lavishly rich and technologically advanced, but the districts are in varying states of poverty. The trilogy’s narrator and protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, lives in District 12, the poorest region of Panem, located in Appalachia, where people regularly die of starvation. As punishment for a past rebellion against the Capitol (called the “Dark Days”), in which District 13 was destroyed, one boy and one girl from each of the twelve remaining districts, between the ages of 12 and 18, are selected by lottery to compete in an annual pageant called the Hunger Games. The Games are a televised event in which the participants, called “tributes”, are forced to fight to the death in a dangerous public arena. The winning tribute and his or her home district are then rewarded with food, supplies, and riches. The purposes of the Hunger Games are to provide entertainment for the Capitol and to remind the districts of the Capitol’s power and its lack of remorse or forgiveness for the failed rebellion of the current competitors’ ancestors.
“‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’ delivers a mesmerizing look into the life of Coriolanus Snow and the root causes of his villainous behavior. Collins once again proves that she is a master of building a fascinating world around complex characters who must grapple with the complications of chaos and control and their effects on human nature.”
–The Associated Press
“It is a steep challenge to write a book whose hero is, everyone knows, destined to become deeply evil. Do we want to hear — now, after we know the endgame — that the young Voldemort was unfairly saddled with a demerit in class or that the adolescent Sauron fretted because he had to wear hand-me-down clothes? Yes, please.”
–The New York Times, Sarah Lyall
“A sleek Hunger Games prequel…The plot of the novel rests on deception and pretence, its view of humanity bleak; yet Collins’s themes of friendship, betrayal, authority and oppression, as well as the extra layers of lore about mockingjays and Capitol’s history, will please and thrill.”
—The Guardian
“…”The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes'” clever exploration of the world and how its perverse forms of entertainment and control came to be are bound to satisfy fans. It may not be a particularly comforting form of escapism, but Collins’ uneasy, thought-provoking prequel is absorbing all the same.”
–Insider
“It’s the pull between Coryo’s head and heart — and the realization that he actually has a beating heart, not just a rose-scented lump of coal — that makes the future President Snow very worthy of a 517-page prequel.”
–The Washington Post
“A gripping mix of whipsaw plot twists and propulsive writing make this story’s complex issues—vulnerability and abuse, personal responsibility, and institutionalized power dynamics—vivid and personal.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A Hunger Games without Everdeen might have seemed as peculiar as a Potter without Harry, but it works beautifully, largely thanks to a new character. The clever, charismatic precursor, Lucy Baird Gray, a Covey (a sort of gypsy) who is chosen to represent District 12 in the tenth Games. She is a folk singer of prophetic ballads and has a thing about snakes. She is gorgeous, of course, in her late mother’s old rainbow dress (the casting for the film, confirmed by Lionsgate, will be fun).”
–The Times
“The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes builds on the original series’ overt critique of violence and those who perpetuate it, again in terms that speak to a more mature audience than their young-adult marketing might suggest. For true fans of The Hunger Games, Collins shines most as she weaves in tantalizing details that lend depth to the gruesome world she created in the original series and Coriolanus’s place in its history.”
–Time Magazine
