20 upcoming YA books we can’t wait to read in 2020

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes – Suzanne Collins

Most of us probably never thought we’d ever read another novel about the world of Panem, the setting of Suzanne Collins’ insanely popular The Hunger Games trilogy.

It’s not clear that we’ve ever been this happy to be wrong before.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes isn’t a continuation of the story of Katniss Everdeen, however. Instead, it is a prequel that focuses on the competitors of the Tenth Hunger Games, which took place sixty-four years before Katniss volunteered as Tribute.. (For reference, the elderly Mags, whom Katniss befriends in Catching Fire, competed in the Eleventh.)

While references to previous Games are rampant in Collins’ original trilogy, we still know very little about how what life in Panem was like as the Hunger Games began, or how a country came to accept and even celebrate sacrificing its own children on the regular. The Tenth Games seems as though it is both established and new enough to grapple with some of those questions.

In a press release from Scholastic, Collins explained that she wanted to use Songbirds and Snakes “to explore the state of nature, who we are, and what we perceive is required for our survival.”

"The reconstruction period ten years after the war, commonly referred to as the Dark Days — as the country of Panem struggles back to its feet — provides fertile ground for characters to grapple with these questions and thereby define their views of humanity.”"

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is available on May 19.