Bedtime Stories: We Are the Ants

Post by Mark T. Locker.

We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson.

If you were abducted by a race of aliens and offered the choice to press a big red button and save the world from annihilation, would you press the button and save mankind? For many, the answer would be a simple yes. But if you are Henry Denton, the answer isn’t all that simple. Henry has been getting abducted by the Sluggers for years. He calls them sluggers because he doesn’t know what they call themselves; they don’t talk to him but they sure look sluglike. But ever since he made the mistake of telling his big brother about the Sluggers, his life has been a wreck. Quickly, his brother proceeded to tell everyone and Henry became branded Space Boy.

Henry’s life has been hard. With an absent dad, a bully for a brother, things were bad. But when the love of his life took his own life, Henry was spiraling hard. His grandmother, who he loved more than anyone, is fading due to Alzheimer’s. When the guys in his high school began ruthlessly attacking him, things got worse. So when the Sluggers kept taking him and kept presenting him with the choice to save the world, he had no intention of saving all the monsters who have made his life so terrible. But then something begins to change. It seems there are people out there who refuse to let Henry destroy himself, much less the world. Suddenly things aren’t as cut and dried as he’d thought.

We Are the Ants is a difficult book to read. It’s brutal and heartbreaking in only the way real life can be. It’s also a sweet, funny, and at times hopeful story. When you get to see the Earth from miles above, and you see the vastness of the universe, you can’t help but gain a new perspective. This is not a book for children, to be sure. But teens and adults will laugh and cry reading this story of growing up, of love and loss and trust.

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