All while contending with ravenous insects who are hell bent on consuming the earth and breeding humanity out of extinction. In addition to their mothers’ drug addiction, Austin and Robby must must deal with constant bullying on account of Robby’s sexual orientation, the eye sore of foreclosed and abandoned houses, and Austin’s brother, who has returned home from Afghanistan with severe injuries. The boys live in the fictional town of Ealing, Iowa, a town inundated with violence and the vulgarities of Midwestern life. On the other, the boys are forced to deal with internal issues brewing in both their families and the community. On the one hand, Austin and Robby are battling the insect infestation that has ravaged the planet.

Smith has a knack for juxtaposing internal and external conflict and he does a phenomenal job of it in Grasshopper Jungle. One writer describes them as having “exoskeletons as tough as the exterior hull of an aircraft carrier and razor sharp barbs on their arms.” Invulnerable to modern day weapons, they are bred with the singular mission of laying waste to humanity. They are many times larger than they should be, thus, the devastation they wreak is nothing short of cataclysmic. These giant insects behave the way normal praying mantises do-eating nearly everything in sight while breeding incessantly. Hideously large praying mantises have infested the planet. While they do end up in the normal teenage mess, Smith exacerbates things by giving the two friends the fate of having – albeit accidentally – brought about the end of the world. On the journey with him is his best friend Robby. Austin is a typical high school kid, obsessing about girls, questioning his identity, and trying to come to terms with the messed up world he finds himself in. Andrew Smith places a sex-obsessed teenage boy in the heart of a serious, world-ending catastrophe. Grasshopper Jungle is, among other things, a teenage coming of age story.

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith