Don’t roll your eyes. If your pre-teen is struggling with the idea of some ‘thoughtful books’ and you want to kick-start a habit of not reading literary candy floss, you should start here. Unlike some of the other highly popular YA dystopian fiction, the Hunger Games trilogy is very well-written. As incongruous as it may sound, the awful conceit (a competition that requires children to, literally, eliminate each other from the game) is sensitively handled while simultaneously highlighting our macabre fascination with reality TV. By the third book it is a fully-fledged introduction into leadership and symbolism, the roots of revolution and political strategy. It never succumbs to sensationalism or trite romances but is an astonishingly sharp critique and well structured. We anticipate that this trilogy will survive the test of time.

(12+ years)