The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, a dystopian young adult action-adventure novel by American author Suzanne Collins, is a prequel set 64 years before the original Hunger Games trilogy. Scholastic published it on May 19, 2020, with a simultaneous audiobook narrated by American actor Santino Fontana. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the book launched virtually. Lionsgate released a film adaptation, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, on November 17, 2023.

The story takes place during the 10th Hunger Games. To revive waning public interest, 24 Capitol Academy students are assigned as mentors to the tributes; the mentor of the winning tribute receives the Plinth Prize, a generous scholarship. Eighteen-year-old Coriolanus Snow, heir to a once-powerful but impoverished Capitol family, needs the prize to fund his education and restore his family’s status. His classmate Sejanus Plinth, heir to the wealthy District 2 family funding the prize, sympathizes with district citizens and is ostracized; he considers Coriolanus his only friend, though Coriolanus treats him with indifference.

Dean Casca Highbottom, the Games’ creator who inexplicably despises Coriolanus, assigns him the female tribute from District 12: Lucy Gray Baird, a member of the nomadic musical group the Covey. At the reaping, she catches the Capitol’s attention by defiantly singing and slipping a snake into the dress of Mayfair Lipp, the mayor’s daughter. Though tributes are starved, kept in a zoo pen, and mistreated, Coriolanus treats Lucy Gray with unusual kindness, inspiring other mentors to do the same. He smuggles her food, and they form a close bond despite initial mistrust.

For a class assignment, Coriolanus proposes betting and sponsored “gifts” for the Games, ideas implemented by sadistic head gamemaker Dr. Volumnia Gaul. As punishment for a classmate’s poor contribution, Dr. Gaul tests venomous genetically modified snakes on her, nearly killing her. Violence between tributes and mentors leaves several dead, and Coriolanus begins to see Lucy Gray as a potential victor. He urges her to use her musical talents in a televised interview to win favor and gifts. During a tour of the arena, rebel bombs explode, killing more tributes and mentors; Lucy Gray saves Coriolanus from a falling beam, while the District 2 male tribute escapes, only to be captured, tortured, and left to die.