Today’s post is about Suzanne Collins. She is an American YA and children’s writer, who wrote for children’s television before becoming a novelist. I am going to give you a link to her Wikipedia entry, which has a very long list of her awards, far too many to list here. One of her awards was a Silver Inky, which was part of an Australian children’s literature prize, in 2009, for The Hunger Games. It was arranged by the Centre for Youth Literature at the Victorian State Library. The Golden Inky was for Australian YA and children’s books, the Silver for overseas work. It’s gone, alas, along with the Centre for Youth Literature, but it’s nice to be able to put an Australian award among her many prizes.
Here is the Wikipedia entry, where you’ll find the list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzanne_Collins
If you haven’t heard of Suzanne Collins for anything else, you have surely heard of the Hunger Games series. I had the original trilogy in my school library, where it was very popular. I think I may be one of the few people who was happy with the ending.
On the remote chance you haven’t read it or seen the movies, it’s set in a future America, now known as Panem, where every year teenagers from twelve Districts are chosen by lot to fight each other to the death or be killed by terrifying creatures in the arena in the Capitol, till only one remains. The survivor is taken on a tour and given a house. That doesn’t necessarily mean the survivor can now live comfortably; in one of the novels, the winners of previous tournaments are dragged back to fight again.
When I first read it, I thought it must have some connections to the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, in which young people are taken as tributes to Crete to be eaten by the Minotaur. This has been confirmed by the author.
Since then there have been two prequels, The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes and Sunrise On The Reaping which I have reviewed on this blog.
https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2025/11/just-finished-reading-sunrise-on.html
The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes is the back story of Coriolanus Snow, the villain of the series. Sunrise On The Reaping is the back story of Haymitch Abernathy, the town drunk who once won a Hunger Games and has suffered PTSD ever since. Sunrise On The Reaping is the most tragic of all the books, because you find out, in it, just why Haymitch ended up as the town drunk and don’t blame him. It is, like all the others, being made into a film.
I’m not sure I can bring myself to see it, after having read the book and cried. But up to you.
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