Book Review: Grasshopper Jungle

Grasshopper Jungle

by Andrew Smith

Summary

Part One
Austin Szerba, or Porcupine to his best friend, is a sophomore at Curtis Crane Lutheran Academy (CCLA) in the farming town of Ealing, Iowa. Austin has a girlfriend, Shannon (Shann) Collins that hs has been dating since the seventh grade, thanks to his best friend, Robby Brees. Robby is a homosexual and has a thing for Robby, leaving the two bullied whenever they are alone. Robby lives with his mother (Connie) after his father left her for another woman while doing research on volcanoes in Guatemala. Robby's mother buys the boys cigarettes.

Austin's dad's (Eric) side of the family is from Poland and Austin he keeps a historical account of his relatives throughout the book, constantly referring back to them in each section. His mother (Connie), a Lutheran, had two sons, converting her husband from Catholicism. Austin also writes down the day's events, everyday, in a journal and keeps them in his closet in the hopes of someone writing a story about him one day. In addition to the day to day stories, he likes to add drawings.

Shann's stepfather, Johnny McKeon, is a direct descendent of the founder of the town and its famous electronic tools. Johnny owns a thrift shop that connects to a liquor store. After being bullied, Robby and Austin have to climb the shop's roof to get their stuff back. Robby asks to kiss Austin, a horny teenager that thinks about threesomes with his girlfriend and best friend, and the two enjoy it. They find an open roof hatch and decide to sneak in. Austin has worked at Johnny's store, obligations of his girlfriend, and knows that Johnny has a secret room that he locks and hides weird things in. The boys hide when they realize bullies, Grant Wallace and his Hoover public school senior friends, have entered the room, soon to steal a blue glass container labeled Contained MI Strain 412E. The boys see the thieves in the parking lot dropping the container, making them the first of the affected. The next victims were Travis and Eileen Pope then Hungry Jack, a homeless war veteran with missing teeth who sifted through the dumpster behind the closed down mall. Even though Shann was with the that night, she was asleep in the back and the boys didn't want her to know they snuck in and saw Grant and his friends break her stepfather's personal possession.

Part Two

Austin wants to talk to his father about sexuality and experimentation but is nervous.

The day after the break in, Johnny is upset at the broken wall that the bullies used to get into the thrift store by. He was more upset over his "glass [globe] the scientists at M.I. made" that contained photoluminescence mold sealed inside. Johnny has no clue if it was valuable or dangerous because it was sent to his shop when the lab shut down., only keeping it because he liked the blue glow-in-the-dark color it made when the lights were out. 

Early on in the book, Austin calls himself the "recorder" of history and plans to tell it the exact way it happened because history is omniscient. He hints to the idea of the end of the world from the photo-luminescent mold that escaped the night of the break in.

Shann's family had moved into Johnny's deceased brother's mansion, a historical house in Ealing, said to be haunted. Shann heard strange typewriter like noises inside the walls and the boys investigated it. They found a large typing apparatus that was spitting out the same warning on paper. The boys unplugged it and the noises stopped.

The boys went to the only gay bar near them, went in for a few minutes, and bolted back out. They were surprised to see the pastor go in and even more surprised to see Hungry Jack. Jack began to come towards them in a drooling uncertainty before running towards the highway and committing suicide. The boys find the body and out pops a six legged bug.

Part Three

The boys had a sleepover and got drunk, Todd being the only one to take one of his mother's Xanax. The two woke up intertwined together in bed, but nothing was mentioned about going farther than that. Travis and Eileen Pope crashed their car and the bugs began to hatch from their insides. Austin's brother (Eric) was serving in Afghanistan and was in an accident making him lose his testicles and his right leg from the knee down. Austin's parents head to Germany, the hospital their son is being cared for at, and the boys lost contact for a few days out of embarrassment. 

Another man was killed, eaten by Hungry Jack, this time with an eyewitness. Ollie, who works the liquor store irregularly, witnessed the crime and called the cops who didn't believe in the six foot tall grasshopper looking thing that killed the man.

Shann had done research on her home and the weed letter that was typed behind her wall and came upon a silo on the property. The three of them head out to investigate what was inside and under the hatch in the middle of the floor. At the same time, Grant Wallce's bug hatched and he began to eat away what he could and find Eileen Pope to procreate. Grant ate his entire family except for his father and went on the hunt for Eileen. Within minutes, the three other bullies hatched, ready for food and sex.

As the three entered the hatch, they were greeted with a light and a recording of a woman welcoming them to Eden, the same word listed on the type writer's paper behind Shann's wall. They realized that they had entered a safe house, the McKeon Industries Infestation Complex Eden Project- Ealing, Iowa. Austin originally thought it to be a bomb shelter built in the 60's. They realized it was a shelter put in place if the contaminated mold had gotten out. In one room, there was a blackboard with the information of the life cycle of the bug: disease, human blood host, larval stage, metamorphosis, sexual reproduction, and finally infestation.

The newest items they found in the shelter were from 1971. In current times, more and more people were hatching and eating one another all while trying to inseminate Eileen. Giant, six feet tall, grasshopper praying mantis like bugs were taking over Ealing. 

The three watched a video created by Dr. Grady McKeon introducing them to the bunker where they were to stay until the world above was habitable. In the mean time, they were to breed. McKeon describes, in three videos, what the germ was and how it affected others. The initial idea was to splice together genetic material from grasshopper semen with plant sperm and fertilize corn with it. As they continue to watch the video, they realize Austin’s grandfather, Felix, worked in the lab and was the first victim of the germ. When video three says it knows to stop the soldiers, it cuts out. The boys remember the other two reels on the roof where there stuff was thrown.

Part Four
Austin informs Shann that he has kissed Robby before when she mentions that he is in love with Austin. Shann calls Austin disgusting and Austin is now fully unsure of himself and his sexuality. The boys depart from Shann’s house with the idea to get their belongings and go back to the silo bunker. While at Robby’s apartment, Hungry Jack finds Austin and his dog in the car. The creature was afraid of Robby!

The boys go back to Grasshopper Jungle and get the last two remaining Eden tapes to watch. May more deaths occur from the Unstoppable Soldiers, the nicknames given to them by McKeon. The boys, with Ingrid, make it down to Eden, hoping Shann will join them. They watch tapes four and five and receive more and more information. Tape five talks about how Felex Szczerba, Austin's grandfather, was the first Unstoppable Solider, and that the end of the world began in Ealing in 1968, but no one knew it was the end of the world. Tape five was all about who should be pinioned with the germ and how they could use the soldiers in total warfare. McKeon goes to explain that flamethrowers can kill the soldiers easier since they have bulletproof exoskeletons, but the soldiers were afraid of McKeon, just like they were of Robby. The blood of Dr. McKeon is the only thing that truly killed the soldiers. Blood, like Robby's, that kept the soldiers at bay.

Shann and her mother and stepfather, Dr. McKeon's brother, enter the silo soon after. The boys decide to take out some of Robby's blood and inject it into paintballs to shoot at the soldiers. They pick up a few others along the way, Robby's mom being one of them. When they thought they were safe, the eggs began to hatch.

Epilogue
The end of the world occurred when the boys were sixteen, now celebrating Robby/s twenty-first birthday, Austin recounts the week before the end of the world. Austin and Shann had sex the night that they got Robby's mom, and she was immediately pregnant, giving birth to a healthy, Polish boy, who is now four years old. Connie Brees, Robby's mother, also gave birth to a little girl, the father being Louis, an Asian man she had sex with the same day Austin and Shann did.

When Robby and Austin made trips to the surface, they never found another human being, only animals coming back in tremendous amount.

The book ends with everyone still living in Eden and buffalo coming to Ealing.

Book Trailer

A trailer made by Smith is short and concise.

Themes

History, Coming of Age, Sexuality, Gay/Lesbian

Similar Themed Books

Maggot Moon by Sally Gardner, Noggin by John Corey Whaley, and When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds. While I have not had the chance to read the books, they came highly recommended in similarity by Goodreads.

Other Books by Andrew Smith

Smith has written eleven other books.

Teaching Ideas

Explain how the setting of the novel reflects the overall end of the world timing. If this had been a larger city, other than small farm town Ealing, Iowa, how could the virus have affected others? Have students write a one page story on how the novel would be different if the setting was in a large city.