Suzanne Collins, author of The Hunger Games, has announced that her next book will be a picture book. Rather than writing a follow-up dystopian adventure for her teenage readers, she has decided to engage with four-year-olds in Year of the Jungle, a story about how her family coped when her father spent a year serving in Vietnam.
Collins is not the only staggeringly successful children’s author who has taken an unexpected step away from her fan base with her writing. Whereas Collins is turning to younger children, J.K. Rowling turned to grown-ups with her recent adult novel about provincial life, The Casual Vacancy.
Many Harry Potter fans were disappointed. While they didn’t expect wizards, magic and Hogwarts, neither did they expect such a grim, miserable novel. Theo Tait wrote in the Guardian, ‘The fan base may find it a bit sour, as it lacks the Harry Potter books’ warmth and charm; all the characters are fairly horrible or suicidally miserable or dead.’
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