The 12 books loved by Hunger Games author Suzanne Collins

Suzanne Collins has proven to be a rather popular author since The Hunger Games first appeared on shelves in 2008. The trilogy ended in 2010 with the publication of Mockingjay, and two years later, the best-selling trilogy was turned into a film series.

Ten years later, Collins returned to the world of The Hunger Games with the prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and, this year, published another prequel, Sunrise on the Reaping.

While Collins is a relatively private writer and doesn’t often share details of her personal life, back in 2010, she did share 12 books that she loves, including a number that she read as a child and the books she keeps going back to re-read.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly about her favourite childhood books, Suzanne shared: “I’ve had a lifelong love of mythology, so I’d have to top the list with Myths and Enchantment Tales, by Margaret Evans Price, which belonged to my mom when she was a girl, and D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths.

“Fiction standouts include A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle; The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer; and Boris, by the Dutch writer Jaap ter Haar, which I still think is one of the best war stories written for kids. Unfortunately, it seems to be out of print in this country.”

She then opened up about some of her other favourite books, which she has re-read over and over again, and which may have inspired her writing.

On this list, she named George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

The influence of both of these books can be seen within Collins’s own dystopian world of Panem, the setting of the Hunger Games series.

Adding that it was “embarrassing to admit” how many times she had re-read these books, Suzanne also named A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Germinal, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and A Moveable Feast among her favorite pieces of literature.