When I first began The Hunger Games
I was pretty shocked with the violence and that this book was geared 
towards teens. A couple of my children had read the book so I decided to finish the book and make sure I knew what the whole thing was about. In the end, I allowed my children to read the subsequent books Catching Fire
and Mockingjay
.I have two reasons for allowing my children to read these books and for finding them fascinating myself.
- The society depicted in this series has completely lost their freedoms. It is a very Communist type of society with no ability to change their circumstances. I felt this was similar to 1984
without some of the adult themes. After reading all three, I still agree with this reason and feel it is important to read this with my children and discuss how they could have gotten that way, and as the story progresses, why the characters make the choices that they do.
- This story rightly depicts a revolution with all of its gore, tragedy, heart-ache, and deception. In times of crisis, many people are stirred up to a revolution rather than seeing what will happen and pulling together as a people to reinvent themselves without all the bloodshed. I wanted my children to see the patterns and how each character's choices played into the revolution. The author seems to make it all rush along as inevitable rather than a set of choices.
In the end, I do recommend these books for older teens. There is some talk of kissing and teen relationships, but nothing terribly graphic.
I agree. On the one hand these remind me of twilight and almost go into the book crack category...one of those books you just feed off of. On the other like you said they've lost everything and are suffering the consequences. I think what I liked most is that in the last book they didn't sugar coat the damage done to them all. How Katnis would black out at times and time passed oddly sometimes. She was totally and completely messed up as anyone in that situation would be.
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