I’m a longstanding advocate for the literary merit of “The Hunger Games” series. I think it’s so much more than a slow-burn romance or gripping action novel, instead pulling back the curtain on propaganda, weighing man’s tendencies toward good and bad and posing the ever-relevant question of when resistance is in earnest and when it is just more war in disguise — all the while making this conversation approachable for young readers. It is everything young adult literature should be, and it represents the genre’s revolutionary power to inspire political understanding in our youth.
YA literature stems from the understanding that childhood is not a discrete state, but a continuous phase of growing into adulthood, during which children need stories that challenge them, not pacify them. That being said, it tends to have a bad reputation. The stories are assumed to be shallow, and the messages are assumed to be empty. Yet this judgment is unwarranted. Sure, some books for young readers serve no greater purpose than to entertain, but in essence, YA literature is simply writing that tailors its message to young readers. Sharing it in a format that is more accessible doesn’t mean watering down its theme.
When I first read “The Hunger Games” in sixth grade, I was terrified — and intrigued. Suzanne Collins wrote with language I understood, allowing me to reflect on the horrible things people can do to each other and the ways we turn a blind eye to it every day. It is a testament to the fact that an author can have the same gut-wrenching effect and inspire the same social and political reflection, but in young readers. And, truly, the best YA works don’t lose their impact when a reader ages out of the “young adult” bracket. Those books still chill me, and I am still learning from them.
That being said, my argument is not that more authors should write YA literature, although it wouldn’t hurt. The real problem for our children is not a lack of books, but a lack of access.
These books that inspire change have a target on their back, increasingly so in recent years. Nationally, there were 6,870 new book bans in the 2024-2025 academic school year, according to PEN America, totaling over 22,000 bans since July 2021. President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders have fed this flame and were used to justify the removal in July of nearly 600 books from Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA) schools, which serve more than 67,000 military-connected children. Many of these books discussed racism, LGBTQ+ representation and feminism. These bans restrict children’s access to diverse, meaningful and empowering stories, which limits their educational potential.
Simply put, books get banned because they uplift marginalized voices and criticize injustice. I mean, what does a ruler — or ruling class — fear more than the growing realization that their regime is unjust? Then, young adult literature is revolutionary. It enables youth to observe the things in their own world that need to change and to view themselves as agents of that change, just like their beloved protagonists. This could be a power shift, as seen in countless dystopias. It could be a change in how we treat each other, as championed in “The Hate U Give” and “Simon vs. The Homo Sapiens Agenda.” It could be touching on unspoken but pressing topics like sexual assault awareness in “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.” Whatever the book may be, the value is the same: children see that it’s possible to choose good even when the world steers you otherwise.
At the end of the day, the president is only one person, and his accomplices are still only a small few compared to the masses who can exercise dissent. In the 2021-2022 academic school year, “11 people were responsible for filing 60 percent” of challenges against books according to The Washington Post. So, the David Hume quote, which begins “Sunrise on the Reaping,” the final book in the “The Hunger Games” series, naturally comes to mind: “Nothing appears more surprising… than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.”
While there are many ways to fight this country’s descent into autocracy, we shouldn’t forget about the most fundamental and influential way: defending the education of our children to be thoughtful, empathetic and empowered stewards of the future.