Katniss the Cattail: An Unauthorized Guide to Names and Symbols in Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games

Who was Cinna? What do the hawthorn and primrose symbolize? Or President Snow’s roses and Peeta’s bread? What about Katniss’s last name? Bringing details from myths, herbal guides, military histories, and the classics, English professor and award-winning pop culture author Valerie Estelle Frankel sheds light on the deeper meanings behind Panem’s heroes and villains in this hottest of YA trilogies. In her series, Collins not only weaves a heroic tale of deep complexity but harnesses the power of Shakespeare and Rome to retell an ancient epic of betrayal, violence, and glory on the stage of an apocalyptic future.

Millions of readers around the world have been swept away by the nonstop action and poignancy of The Hunger Games. But what most readers don’t know is that there’s a library’s worth of history, plant lore, and mythology behind the world of Panem. Now, with Katniss the Cattail, those without access to Collins’s bookshelf can discover the fascinating reality behind Panem.

Katniss the Cattail allows curious readers to look up all the names of Panem and discover a wealth of entertaining, unexpected information. Blight, Cato, and Clove have names that predict their grisly ends, while the evening primrose represents eternal love, youth, and sadness. Boggs was a civil war general, Plutarch a biographer who wrote skewed critiques on Coriolanus and Caesar. There’s a reason Johanna Mason knows more than she’s telling and that Cressida and Messalla betray the Capitol.
From Alma Coin to Wiress you’ll learn about
•Why roses are a flower of death
•How eighteen of the characters are used in Shakespeare’s plays
•Katniss’s nickname Catnip
•The meaning of “The Hanging Tree”
•Peeta’s pearl and Katniss’s salvation
•Effie the saint and Finnick the Irish hero

"If you're a fan of The Hunger Games, you need this book! Period...I devoured this book the moment I opened my mailbox. Every time I read something “new” about a character, my brain started turning." --The Flashlight Reader

"Full of thought provoking observations, Katniss the Cattailis a quick, clean read for any fan of The Hunger Games trilogy." --Sarah's Reviews

"If you dig The Hunger Games like crazy, this book lets you glimpse at it a bit closer" --The Book Wurrm

"I would highly recommend this book to others interested in discovering the hidden meanings of The Hunger Games." --My Book Addiction