Young Adult · Free kit
Sunrise on the Reaping
On his sixteenth birthday — which is also reaping day — District 12's Haymitch Abernathy wants only to finish his chores, waste the afternoon, and see Lenore Dove. The 50th Hunger Games is a Quarter Quell: twice as many tributes. When a boy runs from the square and is shot, Haymitch is shoved into the broadcast as the replacement. Suzanne Collins's 2025 prequel follows him to the Capitol with three other District 12 kids — a neighbor he calls sweetheart, a family oddsmaker, and the merchant girl he cannot stand — and into an arena built as much of cameras as of mutts. The question is not only whether he can win. It is whether anyone watching will be allowed to see what he actually did.
“Don't you let it rise on the reaping.”
Complete free book club kit
BookClubee may earn a commission from Bookshop.org purchases, which supports independent bookshops.
Plan your meeting
Sunrise on the Reaping Icebreakers
Answer in under 30 seconds. These connect to the book’s themes without spoiling the story.
Personality Reveal
1. When someone tells you a bad system is 'just how it is,' do you nod and plan around it — or pick the fight immediately?
Personality Reveal
2. Are you the person who performs a louder, dumber version of yourself for an audience, or the person who goes quiet and precise?
Personality Reveal
3. In a group project, do you recruit a flock and stay with them, or peel off for the job only you think will matter?
Funny & Light
4. What is the most suspicious 'we are filming this for your own good' smile you have ever received?
Funny & Light
5. What object in your bag right now is actually 'pretty with a purpose,' and what is the purpose?
Funny & Light
6. Have you ever gotten a score, grade, or review so low you had to turn it into a personality?
Would You Rather
7. Would you rather be edited into a hero you were not, or left on the cutting-room floor as the person you actually were?
Would You Rather
8. Would you rather spend a hard day doing someone else's chores so a sibling can sleep, or be the sibling who gets to sleep?
Would You Rather
9. Would you rather know the cameras are on and play to them, or never know and find out later what they kept?
Hot Take
10. Hot take: if a story is heavily edited, the audience is part of the crime. Agree or disagree?
Hot Take
11. Hot take: believing something is inevitable is how it stays inevitable. Agree or disagree?
Hot Take
12. Finish this sentence: The most dangerous kind of propaganda is ______.
Personal Connection
13. When have you watched a version of your own life get retold in a way that was cleaner, kinder, or completely false?
Personal Connection
14. Who in your life would you still try to get home to, even if getting home might put them in danger?
Personal Connection
15. What small breakfast or kitchen habit from home would you miss first if you were taken somewhere glittering and fake?