When my 12-year-old daughter introduced me to The Hunger Games last year, I was immediately hooked. Suzanne Collins's dystopian trilogy has been a huge bestseller for tweens, teens, and their parents; critics and fans alike are already predicting that the movies will be the next Twilight or Harry Potter. And unlike those two series, at its core is an unapologetically powerful female hero.

Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence of Winter's Bone), like some futuristic Artemis the Huntress, is a moral and ethical teaching tool on swift, muscular legs. The consequences of the tough decisions she is constantly weighing are often dire. Katniss is drafted by her oppressive government to "entertain" her fellow citizens in a kill-or-be-killed Survivor-style spectacle ... starring children. For 16-year-old Katniss, life isn't a Disney teen chewy of peer pressure and meet-cute crushes. Since her widowed mother (Paula Malcomson) and her sister, Prim (Willow Shields), depend on her for their survival, she can't afford a shred of narcissism. The movie does have some disturbing violence, it's true, but it also yields a number of strong lessons for kids -- and their parents. Such as ...

Sisterhood Sometimes Requires Strength and Sacrifice
Many of Katniss's finest actions are set into motion to protect her younger sister from pain and hardship. As anyone who has seen the trailer knows -- much less avid readers -- the Capitol selects fragile youngster Prim to join the other 23 youthful "Tributes" selected for the big televised battle. Katniss immediately volunteers, trading her life for that of her sister. The cost? Potentially death. At best, she's going to have to kill a lot of strangers to survive.

Loyalty Can Be Hard
Being true in word and deed seems clear-cut enough in theory: Don't sell out your mother, your brother, your best friend, your ... fill in the blank. The challenge is prioritizing loyalties in difficult times (see Sophie's Choice). Katniss has conflicting loyalties -- at home, because her mother had an emotional collapse after her father died in a coal mine, Katniss has become the primary caregiver in the family. At times, in order to safeguard Prim, and because she is angry at the way this shortchanges her own youth, Katniss makes choices between her mother and her sister that sacrifice her mother. Similarly, she wants to be loyal to her best friend, Gale (Liam Hemsworth, The Last Song), but in the arena she is thrown in with Peeta (Josh Hutcherson, The Kids Are All Right), and only by playing a game of "star-crossed lovers" does the pair have any chance of returning home alive. To Gale, it seems like a breach of loyalty, and even Katniss suffers from the apparent betrayal -- but she makes a choice and acts on it.

Take Responsibility
Katniss consistently takes responsibility for her actions. She never blames Prim for her decision to become a Tribute. She poaches outside their district's electrified fence to feed her family, knowing that she alone will be punished for breaking the law. When she takes a younger tribute, Rue (Amandla Stenberg, Colombiana), under her wing during the games and her plan endangers the weaker competitor, Katniss feels remorse that she put Rue in harm's way. One of Katniss's challenges, having provided for her nuclear family for so long, is learning when to share responsibility. When do we own our situation, and when do we need to work as a team? In life, we are constantly shifting between personal responsibility and teamwork -- that is, those of us who aren't shirking or procrastinating or hoping someone else will do the right thing.

One clear lesson that emerges from The Hunger Games -- a lesson learned by our grandparents and great-grandparents during the Depression and by the survivors of last year's Japanese tsunami -- is that hard times build character. Difficult choices (stepping up to save your sister; pretending to love one boy because that will save your lives, even though it will hurt your true love; protecting and comforting a younger Tribute who can only survive if you don't) define Katniss as a character and, to some extent, all of us as human beings.

What I want to discuss with my daughter after taking her to see The Hunger Games is the central message that our actions define us. The reason that Katniss emerges as a role model is not because she has superpowers but because she struggles to do the right thing, for herself and for those she loves. Even when Katniss fails, she stumbles her way to the right actions. And that's a critical lesson in real-world survival that a mother can share with her daughter -- and still appreciate as an adult.