Haymitch and the Donner Sisters: Key to the Mockingjay Resistance Movement? Sunrise on the Reaping & the Pearl Plot

March 12, 2025 by Leave a Comment

I am re-reading The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes tonight after thinking more about David Levithan’s praise for the Sunrise cover. I reviewed Catching Fire yesterday because its Chapter 14 has the thumbnail sketch of Haymitch’s victory in the Quarter Quell that will be the subject of Sunrise. Levithan’s comments, though, I think reflect continuity between Ballad and Sunrise that is as great or greater than that between the second books of each three novel series, a continuity reflected in the Ballad and Sunrise covers.

While I do that reading, though, I want to share links to three Hogwarts Professor posts about The Hunger Games, two that I wrote fifteen years ago in the exciting months before the publication of Mockingjay and one conversation with fans immediately afterward:

(If you only have time for one, make it The Hunger Games ‘Pearl Plot,’ version 2.0.)

The ‘Pearl Plot’ was my guess that, consequent to the Quarter Quell that Haymitch wins, the surviving Donner sister (whom I designate as ‘Pearl’ because she is not given a first name but ‘Madge’ her daughter has a name via ‘Margaret’ that means ‘pearl’) recruits the conspirators and writes the Mockingjay rebellion counter-narrative that leads to the Reaping Day selection of Katniss (via Prim) and Peeta — and almost all the events of the 74th Hunger Games.

Needless to say, I hope, Mockingjay did not deliver on any of the Pearl Plot’s premises being revealed, which should have been no surprise given that District 12 is destroyed by the Capitol at the end of Catching Fire (Goodbye, Undersees!) and the third novel is crowded with Katniss’ victory over the Capitol and District 13 and her eventual apotheosis.

As more than one reader pointed out, though, in the discussion thread dedicated to the Pearl Plot after Mockingjay was published that Collins might be saving all that revelation for a Hunger Games Prequel novel. I hope you’ll read the ‘Pearl Plot’ posts and let me know if you think Sunrise on the Reaping (or the prequel series finale?) will include revelations of what really happened in Katniss’ Hunger Games before the pyrotechnics of Mockingjay!

Post (squared):

If you want to read my book-length discussion of the meaning of The Hunger Games series, it’s available in these three Hogwarts Professor posts:

Unlocking Mockingjay: The Spiritual Allegory’ On Katniss as a Soul Seeking Perfection and Iconological Reading

‘Unlocking Mockingjay: ‘The Literary Alchemy’ On Literary Alchemy and Peeta as Postmodern Christ

‘Unlocking Mockingjay: Katniss’ Apotheosis’ On the Alchemical Arena and Katniss’ Perfection in the Inner Sanctuary

All the Hogwarts Professor Hunger Games  commentary is available at ‘Unlocking Mockingjay: The Complete Set of Posts And a Round-up of the First 30 Discussion Points.‘ Enjoy!

Filed Under: Hunger Games Tagged With: , , ,

Sunrise on the Reaping: All We Know

March 11, 2025 by Leave a Comment

Photo by Todd Plitt, Scholastic

With a week to go until the publication of the second Hunger Games series prequel, let’s take a look at the five things we have been told about Sunrise on the Reaping.

(1) The Plot — and the Ending?

From the Sunrise Amazon page:

When you’ve been set up to lose everything you love, what is there left to fight for?

As the day dawns on the fiftieth annual Hunger Games, fear grips the districts of Panem. This year, in honor of the Quarter Quell, twice as many tributes will be taken from their homes.

Back in District 12, Haymitch Abernathy is trying not to think too hard about his chances. All he cares about is making it through the day and being with the girl he loves.

When Haymitch’s name is called, he can feel all his dreams break. He’s torn from his family and his love, shuttled to the Capitol with the three other District 12 tributes: a young friend who’s nearly a sister to him, a compulsive oddsmaker, and the most stuck-up girl in town. As the Games begin, Haymitch understands he’s been set up to fail. But there’s something in him that wants to fight . . . and have that fight reverberate far beyond the deadly arena.

For readers of the Hunger Games original series, this is not much of tease. We’ve read about the Quarter Quell that Haymitch Abernathy won in Chasing Fire, chapter 14, in which Peeta and Katniss watch the edited tape of how he survived. All Ms Collins’ books are twenty-seven chapters long, which makes chapter 14 of Chasing Fire the central or pivotal chapter of that book and of the entire series. In the coming week we’ll be taking a deep dive into it, as you’d expect.

But we know how Haymitch’s Hunger Games experience ends or at least how the Capitol edited the story. That’s a first for anything Collins has written.

(2) We Have the First Two Pages of the Story

Scholastic released a teaser as a kind of ‘book trailer’ and it has quite a bit of information we didn’t have from Haymitch, who said relatively little about his Games in the Katniss and Peeta Saga. If you haven’t read it, you can read it at one of the several venues that claim to have it exclusively. Here’s the Barnes & Noble version.

I hope to give this excerpt a close reading in the next few days with Elizabeth Baird-Hardy but the top three notes of interest are that Haymitch is the narrator of the opening chapter (and I hope the rest of the book), it is his 16th birthday and as a gift to Abernathy fans we get to meet his younger brother and mother as well as a brief look at their subsistence existence, and, last but not least, it is a Reaping Day times Two because of the Quarter Quell and our hero wants to spend some time with his true love, Lenore Dove. [Read more…]

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But the Cat Came Back: Buttercup, Crookshanks, and Other Feline Survivors of Speculative Fiction

March 8, 2025 by Leave a Comment

As we look forward to the release of Sunrise on the Reaping, this is a great time to reflect on a fascinating, under-rated character of the original trilogy, as well as to ponder the role of cats, not just in The Hunger Games trilogy and its prequels, but throughout speculative fiction, from Hogwarts to outer space. We’ll also consider why it’s the lovable idiot, the orange cat, who so often saves the day and why, as we get close to our next visit to Panem, feline plot threads may be out there, just waiting for a clever paw to grasp them.

Gingers Whose Heads Have Something Inside Them

Those of us who have orange cats in our households know well that they are not generally the most intelligent members of the feline family. My own dear Father Brown is an affectionate creature (at least with us. He’s terrified of strangers), but, when it comes to good critical thinking skills, the other two cats, Miss Fisher and Sam Spade, are far superior. Just googling videos of orange cates will yield a host of photographic evidence that gingers of all shades, particularly males, are justifiably legendary for their bad decision making. Most cat lovers will attest that, if we want to cast a cat mastermind, the best choice would be a calico. The genetic oddity that makes calicos is limited to females (if you really do have a male calico, alert the media, and move away from the neighborhood next to the nuclear waste dump).  Females of all cat species tend to be intelligent. Lionesses, for example, are the ones who do the hunting in prides (as Scar whines in The Lion King when supper is late). Male cats tend to be the brawn, and the females are the brain. Orange toms are also often quite handsome, and know it, hence the Rum-Tum-Tugger’s excessive self-confidence in Cats.  Yet, in looking at the cats who appear in speculative fiction, we see a host of male ginger cats, who are both surprisingly intelligent and remarkably durable. Let’s visit a few of them. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Elizabeth Baird Hardy, Hunger Games, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,