Someone told me that hunger games is more appropriate for a young child than twilight (the books specifically) and I need to know if I’m crazy
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say that either are appropriate for children. I read twilight from ~7-9 years old and hunger games shortly after because a teacher said that a lot of people she knew liked both.
As a kid I was annoyed because I was there for the vampire romance, and she handed me a book with no vampires and not a whole lot of romance (not none I know, but not nearly as much as twilight, and not enough for it to be the main reason you’re reading it imo). But as an adult it honestly just seems like a strange recommendation to give to a 9 year old.
Sure I understood those books textually, but there was no way I was picking up on all the subtext in either. Which is what tells me that one was more appropriate (for me at least, I know everyone develops differently). Because I wasn’t going to understand a lot of the stuff that is explained in between the lines, I wasn’t picking up on the parts that make twilight such a strange romance. Also, because it’s a fantasy setting, I was never trying to compare it to real life, the depictions of violence are very fictional, the implications of sexual situations are few and far between (until the last book at least). But in hunger games, those are children, there are graphic depictions of children killing each other, we are aware that the winners are then often prostituted out to the capital.
The issues with twilight, to me, are more of an external thing. The books were written by a strange woman who chose to depict a lot of things (stalking, abuse, age gaps) in a much more normal light than they should be, but to me, the fantasy setting removes a lot of the danger. Think about watching a show like the walking dead vs a movie about war, both will undoubtedly depict people doing horrible things, but in the fantasy setting, it’s much easier to think from an outside perspective, and harder to imagine yourself in the scenario. With a more realistic setting, such as a historical fiction movie about a real war or a realistic fiction movie about a fake, but realistic, war. We tend to imagine ourselves in that situation (or at least I do), and it becomes harder to separate yourself from the story you’re consuming. As someone who tends to imagine myself in the universe I’m reading about (but didn’t understand this as a kid) I don’t know that the hunger games was great for me.
I don’t think I understood a whole lot of any message being sent by either of these books, but I was certainly trying to, and I do not think that would have been good for me. As a child reading twilight, I tended to write off the strange parts as ‘things that work in that universe’, sure it’s normal there but it would never happen in real life, whereas the hunger games almost felt like it was forcing me to imagine how I would react in a similar situation.
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