I've seen some wary reviews of the film, claiming it glorifies violence and (to quote the Sunday Times last week) “children killing children”. This is misleading. There’s certainly killing, yes, but first of all let's stop calling the Hunger Games and other stories like it a children’s book. No matter what the age of its youngest characters, it is young adult - a genre that did not exist when I was a teenager, although the books with their equally challenging stories were there if you looked in the right place (those yellow spines were a good place to start). Secondly, it's not really about the killing. Although a girl as young as 12 can - and does - die in the Hunger Games arena, these books are fiction of the dystopian tradition that digs through the veneer of our society to show us where we are headed if we are not careful, in much the same way that looking back at history and seeing where we have been can help us see what to avoid in the future. In fact, take away the hair and makeup and some rather sugary teenage smooching, and the Hunger Games is to my mind an adult sf read, equally as disturbing as Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” - another book I would recommend to HG fans.
In case you've had your head buried in the sand for the past few months, Hunger Games heroine Katniss Everdeen is a feisty girl picked (or "reaped" - note the Biblical reference) to take part in a vicious reality TV gameshow where teenagers must kill or be killed. She is forced into an impossible situation by her futuristic society, so she plays the game to help her family - and although reluctant to get involved in the bloodbath that follows the celebrity high jinks, eventually she kills too.
The film has a 12A rating here in the UK, which worries me slightly because as a children’s author I am very aware of my responsibilities when writing for this impressionable age group. Which brings me back to the History Girls. Left to my own devices, I write fairly gruesome fiction. I've done my own bloody version of gladiators in the arena (published by a small press magazine back in the 90's), and I’d defy anyone to find a children’s book with a higher body count than my “I am the Great Horse”. But I got away with that one because it was about Alexander the Great’s atrocities, which are history and therefore strangely acceptable on the 9-12 shelf, in the way a dystopia like the Hunger Games would not be - or maybe writing from the POV of a horse helped pull the wool over people's eyes!
Yet fighting obviously appeals to children. So when it came to inventing my own feisty heroine for a younger market, I dived back into history/legend with the idea of making her more palatable for the age group and came up with King Arthur's daughter, Rhianna Pendragon. Being younger than Katniss, and inhabiting a children’s book rather than a young adult book, I knew from the start that Rhianna couldn't be the kind of heroine who goes around beheading people on every page, at least not if she is to remain a child's heroine for very long. That's why I set her story in Dark Age Britain, where swordplay is much more acceptable, and added magic from the Arthurian legend to sweeten the gore. Rhianna carries a sword, yes, but she cannot blood it if she is to complete her quest. This gives her an added moral dilemma, neatly sidestepping her needing to kill to be strong.
 |
| Katniss Everdeen - kill or be killed |
The film has a 12A rating here in the UK, which worries me slightly because as a children’s author I am very aware of my responsibilities when writing for this impressionable age group. Which brings me back to the History Girls. Left to my own devices, I write fairly gruesome fiction. I've done my own bloody version of gladiators in the arena (published by a small press magazine back in the 90's), and I’d defy anyone to find a children’s book with a higher body count than my “I am the Great Horse”. But I got away with that one because it was about Alexander the Great’s atrocities, which are history and therefore strangely acceptable on the 9-12 shelf, in the way a dystopia like the Hunger Games would not be - or maybe writing from the POV of a horse helped pull the wool over people's eyes!
Yet fighting obviously appeals to children. So when it came to inventing my own feisty heroine for a younger market, I dived back into history/legend with the idea of making her more palatable for the age group and came up with King Arthur's daughter, Rhianna Pendragon. Being younger than Katniss, and inhabiting a children’s book rather than a young adult book, I knew from the start that Rhianna couldn't be the kind of heroine who goes around beheading people on every page, at least not if she is to remain a child's heroine for very long. That's why I set her story in Dark Age Britain, where swordplay is much more acceptable, and added magic from the Arthurian legend to sweeten the gore. Rhianna carries a sword, yes, but she cannot blood it if she is to complete her quest. This gives her an added moral dilemma, neatly sidestepping her needing to kill to be strong.
 |
| Rhianna Pendragon cannot blood her sword. |
I believe both history and fantasy/SF can be used to address violence and other challenging subjects in a safe arena, whether you're writing for children, teenagers or adults - which might explain why my own writing appears to range across two disparate genres. It was touch and go whether I plunged back in time or forwards for "Sword of Light", since I also have a science fiction series in development... which makes me wonder how many fans of historical fiction out there are also fans of fantasy and SF, besides me?
Rhianna Pendragon stars in Sword of Light: Book 1 of the Pendragon Legacy (Templar hardcover £9-99)
Paperback and ebook coming in September 2012.
If you'd like to try my historical fiction for young readers, for 5 days only you can read The Great Pyramid Robbery (US readers click here) ebook free on your Kindle - offer ends midnight 9th April... pass the word!
More details of all my books can be found on my website http://www.katherineroberts.co.uk/ and blog http://www.reclusivemuse.co.uk/
Rhianna Pendragon stars in Sword of Light: Book 1 of the Pendragon Legacy (Templar hardcover £9-99)
Paperback and ebook coming in September 2012.
If you'd like to try my historical fiction for young readers, for 5 days only you can read The Great Pyramid Robbery (US readers click here) ebook free on your Kindle - offer ends midnight 9th April... pass the word!
More details of all my books can be found on my website http://www.katherineroberts.co.uk/ and blog http://www.reclusivemuse.co.uk/
