What’s the best way to attract the attention of an 11 year
old girl, who is upstairs and apparently ignoring my calls to come down for
dinner?
Whistle Katniss’s four-note mockingjay song (from the Hunger
Games) at the bottom of the stairs. She came
running and peered wide-eyed down at me.
I giggled at her for a solid 10 minutes.
Seriously, though, I think she has gotten more out of this
series than just the adventure story.
Emma’s
class read the first book of the series in school, and watched the movie. She then proceeded to devour the last two books on
her own initiative, and we watched the movies together after she was done
reading. She finished the third book in
time for us to go to the matinee of Mockingjay Part 1 on Sunday. I read these
books a few years ago, and watched the first two movies when they came out
on Netflix. It's great that Emma’s
growing up enough for us to go to the theater together for the last two.
She’s been all about Katniss this fall, and this sixth
grader has made some very astute comments on recent world events. At various points over the past month she has
talked to me, with understanding and insight, about how a dystopian society can
form following a war or plague, about how oppression of a group of people by a privileged
upper class leads to disaster, and how Katniss, Harry Potter, and Luke Skywalker have proved
that ordinary people can change the world.
