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Sidekick Super Review: Sunrise on the Reaping (2025) Suzanne Collins
- 4 days ago
- 7 min read
The Basics
Page Length: 400
Audiobook Length: ~13 hours
Grade Reading Level: 6+
Target Audience Age: 12+
Goodreads Score: 4.50 out of 5
Buy it HERE
Setting: Panem, 24 years before the original Hunger Games series, 50th anniversary of the games (2nd Quarter Quell)
Genre: Young Adult Dystopian
Topics: Survival, Family, Love, Friendship, Strategy, Oppressive Government, Rebellion, Sacrifice, Violence, Courage, Grief
Plot: Sixteen-year-old Haymitch Abernathy is a citizen of District 12, the poorest region of Panem. After his father dies in the mines and his twin baby sisters tragically pass away, he becomes the man of the house for his mother and younger brother. His birthday always falls on Reaping Day—the day when two children are selected to fight to the death in the annual Hunger Games.
This year, however, is different: the 50th anniversary of the Games means double the number of tributes. All the kids in District 12 are hoping they won’t be among the four chosen—including Haymitch and his true love, Lenore Dove.
In an unlucky twist, Haymitch's birthday present is being selected as a tribute and sent to the Capitol. There, he quickly discovers the full extent of President Snow’s cruelty—but he also forms unexpected alliances. He befriends the Capitol filmmaker Plutarch Heavensbee and bonds with many of the other tributes, working together to survive against the “Career” tributes—highly trained children from Districts 1 and 2 who dominate the Games year after year.
Some of these new alliances pull Haymitch into a secret mission: to undermine the Hunger Games arena from within. But once he enters the arena, nothing goes according to plan. The Capitol’s cruelty is underestimated at every turn: more tributes, deadly mutts, sadistic traps, and the most ruthless arena yet.
Will Haymitch maintain his alliances and complete his secret mission? What will happen to his family and loved ones if he fails—or if he succeeds? What is the cost of survival—and the cost of resistance?
Themes: Authoritarian control and propaganda, cost of survival and sacrifice, legacies of courage and resistance, media/emotional manipulation, loss of innocence, hope in the face of oppression, power of defiance
You might like this book if you like:
Outdoor adventure hobbies: archery, hiking, camping, orienteering
Filmmaking and video editing
Strategy/role-playing games
Books like The Maze Runner, Scythe, Divergent, Red Queen, The Declaration,
Shows like The 100, The Last of Us, Andor, The Handmaid's Tale, Squid Games
Movies like Battle Royale, The Darkest Minds, Ender's Game, Ready Player One, Snowpiercer, V for Vendetta
Other books written by this author: The Hunger Games Trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Gregor the Overlander series
Teaching Sunrise on the Reaping in Class
Content
Language: rare, mild usage
Sex/Romance: kissing between a boy and a girl in the woods
Violence/Scariness: Lots of violence. 47 kids die in the Hunger Games. Axe fights, poisoning, mutt attacks, explosions, and volcanic eruptions. People die in a house fire. A father hangs himself after his son's death. Tyrannical government leaders torture and punish subordinates.
Drinking/Smoking/Drugs: the main character works for a bootlegger as a teenager. At the end of the story, he is given sleeping tinctures to escape reality and becomes addicted to alcohol, haunted by the atrocities and fallout of the games.
Class Novel-ability:
Unfortunately, this book is just too violent for an in-class read. It probably wouldn’t work well for literature circles either, as there are too many potentially triggering topics. That said, it’s an excellent book—extremely well written and strongly connected to the rest of the series. So far, it’s my favorite book of the year, and your students will love it too, especially fans of The Hunger Games. It might even be my favorite in the entire series!
This is one of those books that can spark and foster a genuine love of reading. It reminded me of my teenage self reading the first book in the series and discovering my own love of books.
The Star Qualities
This book connects to all the others in the series in the most magical way. Since it takes place between the original trilogy and President Snow’s origin story, it fills the gap perfectly. We’re introduced to a variety of characters who appear across both timelines, learn stories of other victors, uncover more about Katniss’s family and predecessors, discover the origin of the Mockingjay pin, and get deeper insight into the Covey family. I love all the little details that make the story richer and make the conclusion so satisfying—it’s truly a masterpiece of connection.
The movie adaptation comes out in November this year. Get your students excited about reading it before the premiere! I cannot wait to watch it after reading. As a fan of the series, I’m especially looking forward to this one, and I think your students will be too.
This book has wide appeal for all readers. First, it features a male protagonist, which is rare in YA, adding a fresh perspective to a story already loved by many teenagers. The action is riveting, there’s a touch of romance just like in the other books, and the story is full of twists, turns, and shocking moments. Even knowing what to expect from the cruel President Snow, I was genuinely surprised by some of the events in this story! Your students will be hooked from the very beginning—it’s incredibly engaging.
The book has been out for about a year and is now more readily available. If you’ve been on library or Libby audiobook waitlists, now is the perfect time to read it—before fans rush to finish it again ahead of the movie premiere.
Book Talk Read Aloud Section
If you have the physical book, read pages 1-3 (through the 5th paragraph "They've taken enough already.")
If you don't, read the same pages (location 2-location 30) in the Kindle reading sample here.
"Reading Like a Writer" Mentor Texts
This passage has many interesting craft elements. First, it includes a song. The narrator does this often throughout the book—countless times, actually. This is one way the author structures the story. The songs often symbolize moments of inspiration, sadness, joy, memory, or melancholy. This passage also uses several other craft moves. It includes stream-of-consciousness internal dialogue, ellipses, metaphors, similes, and a moment of epiphany. There are many techniques here that students can learn from.
This passage is an excellent example of pacing. The checklist structure and internal dialogue allow readers to see the narrator making decisions in real time. The use of sentence fragments also reflects this real-time problem solving. The voice feels conversational, which makes the thinking feel natural and immediate. It’s also simple, making it easy for students to learn from and imitate.
I like this passage because of its imagery. It is full of rich sensory details, allowing readers to clearly picture the moment. You can see, hear, and smell the narrator’s first impressions of the arena. The passage also includes figurative language, action, and dialogue. It packs many different craft elements into a short section of text.
A fragile collection of muscles and bones, a few quarts of blood, wrapped up in a paper-thin package of skin. That’s all I am. As I pass through the doors of this marble fortress, I have never felt more breakable.
Sentences for Combining and Imitation
Sentence sets for combining:
"The woods have patches of life–songbirds singing and insects buzzing–and sections of complete silence." (Sunrise on the Reaping, p. 271)
The woods have patches of life.
There are songbirds singing.
There are insects buzzing.
There are sections of complete silence.
"The carpet has the soft spring of a bed of moss, and it absorbs my footsteps as if I’m already gone and beyond making a sound.” (p. 129)
The carpet has the soft spring of a bed of moss.
It absorbs my footsteps.
It's as if I'm already gone.
It's as if I'm beyond making a sound.
"One of them–a slim girl with a lot of glossy black braids and a small carved pin of a tree on her shirt–tells me her name, Ringina, so I tell her mine." (p. 109)
One of them tells me her name.
She's a slim girl.
She has a lot of glossy black braids.
She has a small carved pin of a tree on her shirt.
Her name is Ringina.
I tell her mine.
"Everything’s a blur–the audience, the ground, the other chariots trying to clear out of our way." (p. 80)
Everything's a blur.
The audience is a blur.
The ground is a blur.
The other chariots trying to clear out of our way are a blur.
Sentences for Imitation:
This book is full of amazing sentences. The author skillfully crafts a variety of sentence structures, and these are just a few examples. The text includes effective uses of ellipses, internal dialogue, dashes, semicolons, lists, sentence fragments, and colons.
"The floor of the forest proves devoid of rocks, but I feel like I’ve seen some . . . the pattern of colorful stones . . . glistening in the sunlight . . . the stream!" (p. 235)
"Not really, Beetee, I think. What I’d really like to do is run away from the raging pit of fire that is your life. But that seems cowardly." (p. 117)
"They perch on the seats, whisper their names–Wellie, the crying girl; Miles, the asthmatic boy; Tread and Velo, the remaining boy and girl." (p.124)
"As for Wiress . . . I shouldn’t judge her so harshly." (p. 101)
"Hersilia offers me a knife. Which I could (a) throw or (b) drive into a Peacekeeper’s heart, ensuring my immediate death." (p. 114)
"Forget about being loose cannons. We need to seem like people you’d want to be your allies. Like people you’d hope were beside you in a mine accident. Steady. Smart. Trustworthy." (p. 114)
"Sore ribs and all, I think about punching the question right off Plutarch’s face. Because the implication is clear: He isn’t just asking why we didn’t start a mini rebellion in the gym. He means back in District 12 as well. Why do we let the Capitol brutes rule us? Because we’re cowards? Because we’re stupid?" (p. 113)
Used this book in your classroom? Tell us how in the comments!
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