Katniss meets June in Dystopian Crossover Book

Okay, so there isn’t one; at least not that I know of, anyway. Crossovers, though, are the subject of this blog post and wouldn't a Katniss and June meeting be really interesting?

Generally, I’m not a big fan of mixing things up in books and movies but when two comic book heroes or two TV shows join forces for an episode or two, or even a series of episodes, it can sometimes lead to entertaining and intelligent reading or viewing.

I remember in the late 1970s/early 1980s there were a Superman/Spiderman crossover and a couple of Marvel/DC crossovers. In the 1990s, shows of similar genre had characters jump from one show to another - and I’m not talking about characters who were on one show, are now the star of their own show and returns for a guest stint on the original show. I think there were a couple of Law & Order crossovers with The Practice. Personally, I wanted to see a Chicago Hope/ER crossover.

Literature, I don’t think, really lends itself to such things because the protagonist in a book is so deeply involved with everything that’s happening on and between the pages of his or her own book that to mix in another protagonist with his or her own depth can be a major challenge to reconcile. It’s harder still, I think if one character is written through a different POV (third vs. first person, for example) and voice (conversational vs. formal, for example) than the other.

However, as I read The Hunger Games, with its strong teenage female lead, and, having recently read and loved Legend, that also has a strong teenage female lead, I was hit with the following thought: what would happen if Katniss and June met? I don’t have an answer. I haven’t read Catching Fire or Mockingjay and I’ve done a good job of steering clear of spoilers and I don’t know what Marie Lu has in mind for June (or Day, the male protagonist in Legend) in books two and three of her dystopian series. Maybe Katniss and June both die and there’s no way for them to meet. Or, a la the Star Wars books, they could meet in a book that regales events that happen somewhere in between their own stories.

Thinking about this, however, made me wonder of other possible crossover pairings. Perhaps, Holden Caulfield, Salinger’s frustrated east coast teen, could meet up with one of Matt de la Peña’s many soul-searching Mexican-Americans on the west coast. Or, Don Lee’s cast of characters from Wrack & Ruin could run into Miles and Jack from Sideways. Or, Once A Runner protagonist, Quenton Cassidy, could (literally) run into Jean Patrick Nkuba from Naomi Benaron’s Running the Rift. Now that I’m on a roll, perhaps, it can be done. The ideas and shenanigans that these characters could get into and the morality tales they could present are spinning tornado-like in my head.

But, these were what I came up with. Do you have any of your own? Do share and, even though it’s early, Happy Easter, Passover and whatever else is being celebrated this time of year.