Grasshopper Jungle

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith, 388 pages

Austin and Robby are just two average high school boys in Ealing, Iowa. Austin has a girlfriend named Shann. Robby is gay and is in love with Austin. Austin knows it and thinks he might love Robby too but knows he also loves Shann. Even with all of this confusion their lives are pretty good until the day they witness some teens breaking into Johnny McKeon’s store. They get into his private office, where Johnny has some really bizarre items. One of the boys takes one and drops it on the parking lot where it breaks, releasing a virus that infects the four boys and some others in town. From these infected people six foot tall praying mantises hatch. The bugs are only thinking about two things: food and reproducing. Is there any escape? I really liked the story but I didn’t like some of the way it was told. It’s told from the point-of-view of Austin, who has to keep stopping in the action to give us one-liners about what other people in the story were doing at that exact moment, or to tell us a story about one of his ancestors, often saying something that he’s already told us. I’m sure there was a specific point the author was trying to make with this plot device, but mostly it was just really annoying to me. However, the plot was good despite the distractions and the characters were awesome so a lot of teens, especially boys, would probably like this story.