On Tuesday, March 18th, 2025, Suzanne Collins released her highly anticipated book “Sunrise On the Reaping” which is the fifth book in her Hunger Games series.
An article at Scholastic talks about the release of the book and how highly anticipated it was. The article is written in an interview style with David Levithan, vice president, publisher, and editorial director, and Suzanne Collins and Starts off with Levithan asking Collings questions about the book. One of the questions Levithan asks is how Collins felt after writing about President Coriolanus Snow’s youth and changing into writing about Haymitch and his struggles. Collins answers this by telling Levithan that it was a relief to switch from such a manipulative and controlling character to working on Haymitch’s character and voice for the new book. She said that there was much more hope for joy, hope, and love. More than Coriolanus and even Katniss. Another question Levithan asked was how Collins felt after spending so much time in younger Haymitch’s shoes and if it changed the way she saw him in the original trilogy. Collin’s answered that she doesn’t think writing Sunrise On the Reaping changed her understanding of Haymitch. She says “Haymitch is still Haymitch- but it gave me room to explore his earlier relationship journey. Like his relationship to Katniss via Burdock. What it meant to be his best friend’s child saw her through the war and became her surrogate father. It was nice to have some time with this angle.”
Another article written in The New York Times by Alexandra E. Petri talks more about the book’s release and what readers should have expected a year in advance. The article begins by talking about the original Hunger Games book, which came out almost seventeen years ago today, which took place in a dystopian world where in order to keep “peace” among the 12 districts and the Capitol of Panem, each district would have to put forward two children spanning from the ages 12 to 18 it an event called the Hunger Games, which is a fight to the death, till one was left standing, only in the book, which focuses on Katniss Everdeen, who is from district 12, the most underprivileged district, defies the odds and survives not only by herself but with her district partner, Peeta Mallark. After the amazing success of the first book, Collins went on to write two more books focusing on Katniss and her fight against the Capital and President Snow and her ultimately defeating him and Panem finally getting true peace. Around 10 years after the release of Mockingjay, Collins released a prequel, A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which centers around President Snow and how he became what he did. In this book and movie, it takes place during the 10th Hunger Games when President Snow isn’t anywhere near being president. He is going to the Capital Academy and every year, there is a “Plinth Prize” Except this year, 24 seniors at this academy have to mentor the tributes of this year’s Hunger Games. As the Dean, Dean Highbottem, calls out the names of the seniors and the district tributes they’ll be mentoring, he finally gets to Coriolanus, unfortunately for him, he gets the District 12 girl, Lucy Gray Baird. As the book goes on, you learn that Coriolanus doesn’t always have Lucy Gray’s best interests at heart nor his best friend, Sejanus, and he cheats to have Lucy Gray win the games. This gets him exiled to the districts, specifically District 12, where he runs into Lucy Gray singing. After some time, Sejanus gets tired of the way the Peacekeepers are running 12 and helps a group of rebels plan a way to escape. Coriolanus finds out and Chaos ensues. Later in the book, Coriolanus uses capital “muttations”, which are genetically engineered weapons, called “Jabberjays” to record Sejanus talking about escaping 12. This causes Sejanus to be hanged and Coriolanus and Lucy Gray to run away. Sadly for Coriolanus though, he slightly lets it out that he might be behind the killing of Sejanus. This causes Lucy Gray to run away and leave a snake for Coriolanus and he starts to open fire. He is later sent back to the Capitol where he meets Dean Highbottom and poisons him. Shortly after this, the book ends and the reader is supposed to assume he is ascending to his presidency.
One last article written by Maddie Ellis at Today Magazine talks about the cover of the new Sunrise On the Reaping book and a synopsis of the book. The cover, of course, has the title, then below it is a bird and a snake welded together with spikes coming from the center. In the book, this has great significance to the story line and it makes you like certain characters more after you figure out what it is. David Levithan says “The spiky sun rises on a symbol that will come to mean a lot to Haymitch Abernathy, as well as countless readers.” He also said, “Artist Tim O’Brian has created another iconic Hunger Games cover- this one symbolically exploring one of the central themes of the series: how conflicting forces can be connected by their common nature, the songbird and the snake springing from the same source.” In the article, it says that in the book, we will be visiting Panem 24 years before the 74th Hunger Games, specifically the 50th Hunger Games and the 2nd Quarter Quell. As we know from Catching Fire, these “Quarter Quell” years are different in a way that makes them have a cruel twist. This twist? These games will have double the amount of tributes going into the games. Two boys. Two girls. Haymitch is trying not to think of his chances of being reaped, he only wants to see his girl, Lenore Dove, on his birthday. When he’s picked, all his dreams are shattered. He is going into the games with an old friend who is like a sister to him, a compulsive odds-maker, and the most stuck-up girl in town, who he absolutely cannot stand.
