Ant Bully - Hardcover

Nickle, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0590395912 ISBN 13: 9780590395915

Publisher: Scholastic Press, 1999

Synopsis

Since he cannot fight back against the bigger and meaner Sid, Lucas takes out his anger at being bullied by playing nasty games with ants, but they soon have enough and teach him a lesson about being mean.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Miniature worlds can be big attractions, as the films Antz and A Bug's Life show. Unfortunately, this insect adventure, concerning a boy who mistreats ants, provides no basis for its fantasy plot and evokes little sympathy for its hero. Lucas, who wears a goofy propeller cap and nerdish glasses, suffers the taunts of a tough kid named Sid. After Sid blasts him with a water hose, Lucas gets a squirt gun and does the same to a colony of ants. Alas, Lucas is no match for his would-be victims, who use a magical green potion to reduce him to their size and then sentence him to hard labor. ("Don't you realize how long and hard we work to build what you destroy in seconds?" huffs the Queen, who lounges on a pink chaise, smoking through a golden cigarette holder and nibbling gumdrops.) Once Lucas learns a lesson in community, the ants restore him to his original proportions, then devise a predictable comeuppance for his hose-toting nemesis (shrinkage, of course). Nickle's fine-line acrylic illustrations accent the slender digits and mandibles of the black ants; except for the long-lashed Queen Ant, the identical drones, wasps and spider here are painted in entomological detail. The author credibly anthropomorphizes ant societies, stressing equality and cooperation. Yet the facile conclusion denies Lucas a chance to succeed on human terms. Ages 4-7.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal:

Kindergarten-Grade 3-Lucas's funny glasses and strange hat make him a perfect target for Sid, the neighborhood bully, and, since Lucas can't fight Sid, he tortures defenseless ants instead. Then the ants retaliate, and their queen shrinks Lucas to their size, forcing him into a life of hard labor with the worker ants. When he is given the supreme test of bringing the queen a red Swell Jell candy from his home, the boy shows his true mettle, protecting his partners from being swatted by his father. In gratitude, the queen returns him to his normal size, shrinking Sid instead. With the current popularity of the animated movies Antz and A Bug's Life, this title is timed just right for success, but the book falls short. The message is certainly clear, and Nickle's full-page acrylic paintings are bright, funny, and appealing. The text, however, is only average. The sentences are choppy, lack variety in their structure, and leave out potentially interesting details. Still, since the theme of a bully's getting his comeuppance continues to appeal to youngsters, the story is a suitable additional purchase for those collections in which books such as Phyllis Reynolds Naylor's King of the Playground (Atheneum, 1991) are popular.
Nancy Menaldi-Scanlan, LaSalle Academy, Providence, RI
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0590395912
• ISBN 13: 9780590395915
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 32