Mockingjay

Collins, S.  (2011).  Mockingjay.  New York: Scholastic Press.

This book has been on the Bestseller List of New York Times Children's Books.

The third book in this series was by far the most violent of them all.  Katniss wakes up from her injuries and worries about Peeta.  Did he survive?  Then she discovers he is held prisoner by President Snow. She also finds she has been brought to District 13, the district that had been deserted years ago.  Many who had run away from their districts found their way here.  District 13 is trying to overthrow the capital.  They need a champion to get the other districts to follow along with their plan.  They had intended to use Peeta but he was captured by the Capital.  They ask Katniss to be the Mockingjay, their face of hope.  She will only do it if those who were captured would be rescued and she would get to kill President Snow.  There was a successful mission to rescue Peeta and the others, but Peeta has been tortured for too long and at the first sight of Katniss, he tried to strangle her.  Over time he gets a little better but she never knows if she can trust him.  He convinces them that he is okay to go along with the mission to get President Snow.  When they get to the capital, they discover that they have been set up in a trap.  Only five of the thirteen get out to go on, Katniss, Gale, Peeta, Cressida and Pollux.  They decide to go on in different directions.  She gets within a block of the President's mansion when she notices a barricade which is full of children.  At first she believes that they are going to be let into the mansion to get them out of the cold but suddenly realizes they are for Snow's protection.  Then the parachutes come.  The children think they contain something really good so they scramble for them.  The first ones explode, killing or hurting children.  A fire starts to burn her and she drifts into oblivion.   The rebels are victorious but Katniss realizes that President Coin has gotten her way after all.  When she is to kill Snow she shoots Coin instead.   She did it for Prim, her sister. 

I have a love hate relationship with this book.  I hated that so many people had to lose their lives for the race to figure out what was really happening to them.  I love that Katniss and Peeta eventually resolve their differences and have children, there is no mention of marriage.  I also hate that maybe this could be the fate of the world, not just North America, unless the nuclear war threats are destroyed.  I had a feeling of nostalgia when Kat and Gale would go into the woods to hunt.  I lived near a wooded area and we spent a lot of time there.