Title, book cover announced for ‘The Hunger Games’ prequel
Suzanne Collins’ “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” is due out May 19. Scholastic announced the title Friday along with the cover art, which features the now-famous Mockingjay symbol, along with a snake.
This cover image shows “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” a Hunger Games novel by Suzanne Collins. Photo: Scholastic via AP
Collins announced earlier this year that she was revisiting the world of Panem with a new book set before the days of Katniss Everdeen. “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” takes place 64 years earlier, during what Collins describes as the Reconstruction period after the war. It starts off on the morning of the 10th Hunger Games competition.
“The Hunger Games” was the first of a trilogy of best-selling books. It led to four blockbuster movies starring Jennifer Lawrence.
Earlier, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had stopped at an airport in Chitral and been given a traditional feathered mountain hat, similar to one gifted to William’s mother Princess Diana during her visit to the area in 1991. They were also given an album of photos of Diana during her visit.
William highlighted the visit to the glacier and the challenge of climate change, a major theme of their five-day trip, in a speech the previous evening at a reception hosted by the British High Commission at Pakistan‘s national monument in the capital, Islamabad.
Pakistan‘s northern glaciers and those throughout the Hindu Kush and Himalaya region, are an important water store for 250 million people, and another 1.6 billion rely on rivers originating in the mountains, putting many communities at risk as global temperatures rise.
“This could lead to a loss of over a third of these vital glaciers in less than a century, with enormous impacts not only on the availability of water, but on agriculture and hydropower generation,” William said in his speech.
He said he hoped Wednesday’s visit to Chitral would help the couple better understand the challenges residents were facing first hand. “I hope to learn what more we all can do to help prevent and mitigate this impending global catastrophe.”
Kate and William later observed damage and emergency response drills in a village in Chitral that had been hit by floods due to glaciers melting.
They also vistaed a settlement of the Kalash people, a small indigenous group living in the Chitral region where they met with young people and wore colourful local scarves and headwear while being treated to song and dance.
