Listen

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes audiobook vs book: which should you choose?

The book has one narrator and one viewpoint, and the 10th Hunger Games pulls the story forward. Against that, there is a cast of 24 tributes and 22 mentors with Latin-flavoured names, and the songs are spoken rather than sung.

Read vs Listen·Verdict last reviewed 23 October 2026·6 min read

Short answer: for The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes audiobook vs book choice, we say listen on Audible (100% confidence, clear cut). Santino Fontana reads the only recording, Scholastic Audio’s 2020 edition, in 16 hours 16 minutes, unabridged, on Audible UK and Audible US. One viewpoint, one narrator, AudioFile’s praise for his performance and a 528-page book favour audio, and nothing confirmed points towards print.

Confidence 100%, which puts it in the clear cut band. Bands run from close call at 50 to 64, through leaning at 65 to 79 and clear at 80 to 94, up to clear cut at 95 and above.

What this book actually is

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes is Suzanne Collins’s prequel to The Hunger Games, published by Scholastic on 19 May 2020 in print, digital and audio at once, with a world English first printing of 2.5 million copies. It sold more than 270,000 copies in its first week. It is set 64 years before the first book, on the morning of the reaping for the 10th Hunger Games, when 18-year-old Coriolanus Snow, from a once-powerful Capitol family fallen on hard times, is made mentor to the female tribute from District 12, Lucy Gray Baird.

It is the first Hunger Games novel told in third person, focused on Coriolanus alone, and it runs to three parts on what Collins calls “a three-act dramatic structure”. Five epigraphs, from Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Wordsworth and Mary Shelley, open the book. Songs run through it: Collins wrote “The Ballad of Lucy Gray Baird” to be sung to a variation of “The Unfortunate Rake”, and “The Hanging Tree” is kept by Lucy Gray’s travelling troupe, the Covey. A film adaptation, directed by Francis Lawrence with Tom Blyth and Rachel Zegler, came out in November 2023.

The case for reading it

The case for print is the cast list. The fandom wiki counts 23 named tributes besides Lucy Gray and 19 named mentors besides Coriolanus, Sejanus and Clemensia, and many of the Capitol names are Latin-flavoured inventions: Vipsania Sickle, Hilarius Heavensbee, Arachne Crane, Volumnia Gaul. If you see these names written down once, they are easy to remember. If you only hear them, they are easy to mix up. This book has more names to keep track of than any other in the series.

The songs are the other reason. Collins quotes lyrics in the text, and UK listeners say Fontana speaks them. In print a reader can take a verse at their own pace, and the five epigraphs that introduce the state-of-nature theme are printed as quotations before Part I. Whether the audiobook reads them is not confirmed.

The case for listening to it

The structure is the kind audio handles best. It is the same structure that gave The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay and Sunrise on the Reaping a Listen verdict with clear confidence. There is one viewpoint character, one narrator and one countdown to the arena, and Entertainment Weekly says the chapters close on cliffhangers. Nothing in the printed book needs to be seen: no map, no documents, no special typography is reported.

Santino Fontana is a Tony Award-winning actor (Tootsie) with an Audie for a previous narration, and Audible UK listeners praise his voice (“his voice I could listen too for days”). Listeners rate the book 4.4 on Audible UK and 4.5 on Audible US, as of October 2026, slightly below the Maslany trilogy recordings on the same UK store.

Get the audiobook16h 16m, read by Santino Fontana

Listen on Audible

The audiobook in detail

There is one English recording, read by Santino Fontana for Scholastic Audio and released on 19 May 2020, the same day as the print edition. It runs 16 hours 16 minutes, unabridged, and is the same listing on Audible UK and Audible US, so there is no edition choice. At 1.5x it takes about 10 hours 51 minutes, at 2x 8 hours 8 minutes. At 16h 16m it is 5 hours 41 minutes longer than Tatiana Maslany’s The Hunger Games (10h 35m) and 3 hours 28 minutes longer than Jefferson White’s Sunrise on the Reaping.

No music, cast or sound design is credited. UK listeners say the lyrics are spoken (“him awkwardly speaking the lyrics was jarring”), and some find the female voices less convincing than the male ones. AudioFile praised Fontana's performance as impactful, while the complaints come from listeners. Fontana reads only this book in the series: Maslany reads the trilogy on Audible UK and White reads Sunrise on the Reaping.

Who should ignore this verdict

Anyone who has already listened to the other four Hunger Games books and wants the same narrator will not get it here, and may prefer print for continuity. Readers who want to hear the songs sung should know that neither format sings them, but the film does. If you struggled with the names in Mockingjay, start this one on Kindle, where you can quickly swipe back to check a tribute's name.

Read differently from most people? The app, coming soon, will let you switch off any of the thirteen checks. Get notified →

Related verdicts

Same verdict

The Hunger Games

Book 1, read by Tatiana Maslany. It is 5h 41m shorter, and we decided it for audio with clear confidence.

Same verdict

Sunrise on the Reaping

The other prequel, read by Jefferson White, with a film due on 20 November 2026.

1984George OrwellSame verdict

1984

A dystopian classic with a Listen verdict, and which sends readers to an appendix.

Start here

How we decide

The thirteen questions behind every verdict on this site.

Questions people ask