SUNRISE ON THE REAPING and How I’ve Changed (Some More)

Fifteen years ago, I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins in preparation for the release of the first movie. I was 18 years old, just a couple years older than Katniss’s character. Of course, I fell in love with the trilogy, devouring the next two books and seeing every movie in theaters. Nine years later, Suzanne Collins gifted the world another Hunger Games book with the release of her prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. She offered a window into the 10th annual Hunger Games through the eyes of President Snow as a young man. After reading it, I wrote an essay about how the Hunger Games prequel helped me realize I’ve changed. Flash forward five years, and she’s published another Hunger Games prequel called Sunrise on the Reaping. This one draws us into the 50th Hunger Games, back when Katniss’s mentor Haymitch gets chosen as a teen tribute. Reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in 2020 triggered quite a bit of self-reflection for me. The tragedy of the Hunger Games and the violence against children affected me more viscerally as an adult and as a mother than it did when I was a teen reader. This helped me feel more deeply the ways in which I had changed as a pers...