Sunrise on the Reaping: A Hunger Games Novel

Gr 7 Up–The second Quarter Quell reaped twice as many tributes for the Hunger Games, but Haymitch Abernathy’s name was not one of them. Not until one of the boys who was reaped is shot dead, at which point Haymitch is on the wrong side of the Peacekeepers and forced to take his place. Having no winners in the last 40 years, Plutarch Heavensbee is the tributes’ escort while Mags and Wiress are the mentors for District 12. Despite their conditions in Catching Fire, both Mags and Wiress have their full faculties for Haymitch’s games, invoking a creeping foreboding as familiar characters plan a rebellion we know is destined to fail. Readers of the original trilogy know how Haymitch won his games, they know what happened to his loved ones after, and despite knowing how his story ends, Collins manages to subvert expectations into white-knuckle moments. Haymitch’s relationships are the backbone of the novel as readers compare who he knows with where they will end up: his romance with a Covey girl, his friendship with Katniss’s father, and his disposition toward alcohol all break one’s heart from the first mention. Collins adds considerably to the lore of Panem, while driving home themes of fascism, security, and propaganda. Katniss’s unreliable narration in The Hunger Games led readers to believe many facts that are simply actually Snow’s fictions, the propaganda now exposed under Haymitch’s narrative.