PS: No need to publish this comment.

Collins offers an insight to the true reality of violence. It leaves you broken. It changes you forever. People die. If she ended it any other way the message would be that violence is a great way to solve our problems! What do you think our young soldiers see when they go to war?

You completely contradict yourself when you say “Whether intentionally or not, to my mind, the series glorifies the torture of children.” How? By leaving you with a sick feeling? That, my friend, is NOT glorifying it. That is exemplifying the theme that violence is BAD. If you felt GOOD after reading it, then it would be glorifying it. Do you see how that works? Because I get the sense that you really don’t understand what the term “glory” actually means. When we reward violence with “glory” we teach our children that violence is good. There is not a single character who is rewarded with “glory” at the end of the series. And even when Katniss & Peeta are “rewarded” with their victory tour, it makes them sick. That is teaching the reader that violence is BAD.

Do you consider our service men and women “crazies” too? You must, since we are a nation who has forced our youth to go fight in real-life death games (aka Vietnam, WWI, WWII). And don’t think for one minute that the horrors they were forced to witness were less violent than what is in this series. Yet, they were just innocent kids forced by the government to kill one another. Does that sound familiar? I think educating our youth on what to expect when a nation turns to violence to solve its problems is better than sheltering them; at least they’d know what to expect when we throw them to the wolves.

Literature like The Hunger Games is offered as a high-interest companion to real history. Students need a mixture of both non-fiction (like their history books) and fiction in school. They are taught the same lessons in history (they study gladiator battles, genocide, slavery, battle strategies in middle school history), but it makes sense to them when they read it from a teenage perspective. And Suzanne Collins does a brilliant job writing. In addition, she doesn’t use profanity and there is no sex.

I am a teacher and I am thankful she wrote this series; my students are more engaged and excited about reading than ever before. They take more interest in history class when they see the connections. Education is about opening their minds, not sheltering our kids from rich learning experiences.

I let my son read it when he was 11. He loved it even more than the Percy Jackson series, which actually has much more violence than The Hunger Games.