Banned Book Profile: The Hunger Games

This is the last day of Banned Books Week (which started last Saturday… so it’s actually a week-and-a-day–but who’s counting?), so to finish up the week I’ve picked a YA book that came out just a few years ago. It has just been made into a movie, due to come out next March (filming wrapped in the mountains of NC within the last week or so), so it’s hot news. I’ve only read the first book in the trilogy, and I think this is the only one that has raised concerns. The book tells the story of a distopian world where, as a punishment for past rebellions, each region of the country must annually submit a male and a female between the ages of 12 and 18 to compete in a fight-to-the-death competition that is televised throughout the country. It’s Survivor meets Gladiator… or something like that. While the story deals with teens literally killing one another, is this enough to warrant bans and challenges? The book contains no profanity or sex (that I recall, anyway), and even the violence is not gratuitous–just enough to tell the story. But that wasn’t enough for at least one concerned parent.  Here are the facts:

THE FACTS:

Title: The Hunger Games
Author: Suzanne Collins
First Published: September 14, 2008
Publisher: Scholastic

Where/When/Why Banned or Challenged (from The School Library Journal):

• In 2010, Tracy LaSalle challenged the book, asking the Goffstown, NH School Board to remove The Hunger Games from her daughter’s class, claiming that it gave her 11-year-old nightmares and could numb other students to the effects of violence. “Mrs. LaSalle stated the main character is the only one of twenty-four children that survives in the book, that children are being killed for entertainment, pitted one against the other in a game,” read Goffstown school board minutes from September 20. “Mrs. LaSalle asked what this book teaches students as far as honor, ethics, and morals. Mrs. LaSalle stated there is no lesson in this book except if you are a teenager and kill twenty-three other teenagers, you win the game and your family wins.” Although Tracy LaSalle has yet to read the bestseller herself, on September 20 she requested the removal of the book from her daughter’s seventh-grade class at Mountain View Middle School due to its violent subject matter. The book is being read aloud during a reading period for those who choose not to take a foreign language class.