Having already found massive success with YA and tween readers, The Hunger Games’ author Suzanne Collins has turned her attention to kids ages four and up with Scholastic’s release of Year of the Jungle next year.

Set to be published on September 10, 2013, Collins’ new work is an autobiographical picture book based on the year Collins’ father served in Vietnam. A first-grader at the time, Collins explores her struggle to cope with his absence and how she dealt with loving the changed man that returned.

Illustrations are provided by acclaimed picture book author-artist and television writer/animator James Proimos.

Also for 2013, Scholastic will publish a trade paperback version of Catching Fire on June 4 and re-packaged paperback editions of Collins’s bestselling The Underland Chronicles five-book series for middle readers about Gregor the Overlander.

To date, more than 50 million copies of the original books in The Hunger Games trilogy are in print and digital formats in the US, and foreign publishing rights have been sold into 56 territories in 51 languages.

Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games movie, which premiered in March this year, reaped more than US$700 million at the box office worldwide becoming the 13th highest grossing film of all time domestically.