Andrew Smith writes young-adult and middle-grade fiction that combines adolescent uncertainty, dark comedy, speculative disruption, and an interest in the hidden connections among people and history. A longtime high-school teacher, he drew Grasshopper Jungle from a story first written for his son and built its coming-of-age questions around an absurd giant-insect apocalypse.
MICHAEL L. PRINTZ HONOR BOOK • Intense, complex, and brave, this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America. “This raunchy, bizarre, smart and compelling sci-fi novel defies description—it’s best to go into it with an open mind and allow yourself to be first drawn in, then blown away.”—Rolling Stone “Nuanced, gross, funny, and poignant, it’s wildly original.”—The San Francisco Chronicle In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It’s the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it.
Print · Penguin · 2014 · English
eBook · Penguin · 2014 · English
More About Andrew Smith
Andrew Smith grew up northwest of Los Angeles as the first member of his immigrant family born in the United States. After studying political science and journalism at California State University, Northridge, he decided reporting was not the writing life he wanted, traveled widely, worked an assortment of jobs, and began teaching high school in the early 1990s.
Teaching and writing remained parallel parts of Smith's career. He has taught advanced-placement classes and English to non-native speakers, and he describes daily contact with young people as a source of stories and character details while deliberately keeping his author and teacher roles separate in the classroom.
Smith's fiction repeatedly asks how apparently unrelated people, histories, and details connect. In interviews about Grasshopper Jungle, he places its adolescent uncertainty, friendship, sexual identity, and concern with what histories omit at the center of a story whose absurd giant-mantis apocalypse magnifies the transition into adulthood.
Grasshopper Jungle followed a period when Smith had considered leaving professional publication. He initially wrote the novel for his son, began with the title, and worked forward without an outline. The book became a 2015 Michael L. Printz Honor Book and an ALA Rainbow Book List selection; Smith later expanded into middle grade with The Size of the Truth and its follow-up, Bye-bye, Blue Creek.
