Grasshopper Jungle Release Tour and Review

Title: GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE

Author: Andrew Smith

Genre: Fiction | YA | LBGT

Release Date: 2/11/14

Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the story of how he and his best friend , Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.
To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He is stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann.

Ultimately, it is up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.

B&N  | IndieBound | Goodreads  | Amazon

This is the truth. This is history.
It’s the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it.
You know what I mean.

February 3rd – The Midnight Garden

February 3rd – The Story Siren

February 4th – Good Choice Reading

February 4th ^– Bookish

February 5th – I Read Banned Books

February 5th – Jenna Does Books

February 6th – Bibliophilia, Please

February 6th – Escaping One Book At A Time

February 7th – Scott Reads It

February 7th – Live to Read

February 10^{th –} Alice Marvels

February 10^{th –} The Society

February 11^{th –} Lexi Swoons

February 11^{th –} A Reader of Fictions

February 12^{th –} Roof Beam Reader

February 12^{th –} Forever Young Adult

February 13^{th –} The Compulsive Reader

February 13^{th –} Books and Bling

February 14^{th –} Book Chic Club

February 14^{th –} The QQQE

February 17^{th –} JeanBookNerd

February 17^{th –} Ticket to Anywhere

February 18^{th –} Sleep Eat Read Books

February 18^{th –} Read Now Sleep Later

February 19^{th –} Anna Reads

February 19^{th –} Word Spelunking

February 20^{th –} Books With Bite

February 20^{th –} What A Nerd Girl Says

February 21^{st –} Wastepaper Prose

February 21^{st –} LRB – Guest

February 24^{th –} We Are Word Nerds

February 24^{th –} Cabin Goddess

February 25^{th –} Ex Libris

February 25^{th –} Cari's Book Blog

February 25^{th –} A Good Addiction

February 26^{th –} YA Reads

February 26^{th –} The Young Folks

February 27^{th –} Novel Thoughts

February 27^{th –} Fangirlish

February 28^{th –} Once Upon a Twilight

February 28^{th –} Naughty Book Kitties

Andrew Smith is the award-winning author of several Young Adult novels, including the critically acclaimed Winger (Starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness—an Amazon “Best of the Year”) and The Marbury Lens (A YALSA BFYA, and Starred reviews and Best of the Year in both Publishers Weekly and Booklist).

He is a native-born Californian who spent most of his formative years traveling the world. His university studies focused on Political Science, Journalism, and Literature. He has published numerous short stories and articles. Grasshopper Jungle, coming February 11, 2014, is his seventh novel. He lives in Southern California.

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Thanks so much to Amy and Kriss (and anyone else involved) who made this gorgeous tour look the way it looks, and for all the other hard work involved. GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE is quite literally my favorite young adult novel, and it's also really pushing the limits toward my all time favorite book. But that's not what we're here for.

We're here for an overall review (and a giveaway, obviously), so maybe I better get to that, eh? I know probably none of you have been reading my series of responding to the book as I re-read it, section by section, but that doesn't really matter. That's an entirely different animal.

So ... without further ado, here is my review.

GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE, which is not officially sub-titled: A HISTORY, is about a lot of things. What does that mean, anyway? About? Well, in my opinion, when you're talking about art, about means ... meaning. Specifically, it means what it means to me.

Well, that sounds simple, but it isn't. Don't worry. That's a good thing. Mainly, to me, this book is about questions. Not only like, what does history mean if we're bound to repeat it anyway, which is obviously an important question man has pondered for some time, but also like: who are we, and what defines us as men and women, boys and girls, cowards and heroes, and sinners and saints and all the spectrums in between? Is it actions? Thoughts? Behaviors? Accomplishments? Asking the right questions? Questioning things in general?

I would argue that's it's all of the above, but I don't have to argue that of all the things I possess in this life, knowledge of self is probably the most valuable. Nothing trumps it. It's not always a nice, easy thing to possess, because I'm a human being, and being a human being is fucking hard sometimes, but it helps to know that I am fragile and imperfect and kind and sensitive and observant and brave.

I am a lot like Austin Szerba.

I am a lot like Robby Brees.

I am not so much like Shann Collins, but I love her anyway.

Austin has a lot of questions. Austin questions himself a lot. He doesn't have a lot of answers, but he does have the truth, and his devotion to telling it is one of the greatest things about his character and about this book. THE greatest thing about both is his love for his friends. I don't know if I've ever had friends as great as Austin and Robby, but I know that if I ever did, I would treasure them.

And ... I hope you don't mind that I didn't really talk about the plot. You can find out about that all over the internet, if you want, but I thought it would make more sense to write a little bit about how much this book means to me, since that too might make you want to buy it.

Which is kind of the point after all, isn't it?

2014 YA Reading

I'm finally doing one of those years where I actually keep track of every single book I read. For now I'm just using my phone, but I'll eventually update Goodreads. I'm hoping to get to 40 books. I'm a somewhat slow reader, so 40 books would be a good number for me.

Anyway, for Christmas I got this (from my dear friend Amy Del Rosso):

It's a t-shirt and the ARC of Grasshopper Jungle, by my very favorite author, Andrew Smith.

Luckily, I read an earlier ARC of this story, because I'm going to use my enthusiasm for reading this new copy to encourage myself to read three of my biggest kid lit gap books:

The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier

Jerry Renault ponders the question on the poster in his locker: Do I dare disturb the universe? Refusing to sell chocolates in the annual Trinity school fund-raiser may not seem like a radical thing to do. But when Jerry challenges a secret school society called The Vigils, his defiant act turns into an all-out war. Now the only question is: Who will survive? First published in 1974, Robert Cormier's groundbreaking novel, an unflinching portrait of corruption and cruelty, has become a modern classic.

Before there was such a thing as Young Adult (three years before I was born, in fact), Robert Cormier wrote one of the all time classic books about teens. I'm reading this one now, and am duly impressed by Cormier's grasp of character.

Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops. Now her old friends won't talk to her, and people she doesn't even know hate her from a distance. The safest place to be is alone, inside her own head. But even that's not safe. Because there's something she's trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens. And then she would have to speak the truth. This extraordinary first novel has captured the imaginations of teenagers and adults across the country.

I know all about this book. I even participated in the SPEAK LOUDLY Twitter campaign when it was (once again) being challenged, but I still have not read it. I know, I know. This one's up next.

Holes, by Louis Sachar

And so, Stanley Yelnats seems set to serve an easy sentence, which is only fair because he is as innocent as you or me. But Stanley is not going where he thinks he is. Camp Green Lake is like no other camp anywhere. It is a bizarre, almost otherworldly place that has no lake and nothing that is green. Nor is it a camp, at least not the kind of camp kids look forward to in the summertime. It is a place that once held "the largest lake in Texas," but today it is only a scorching desert wasteland, dotted with countless holes dug by the boys who live at the camp.

The trouble started when Stanley was accused of stealing a pair of shoes donated by basketball great Clyde "Sweetfeet" Livingston to a celebrity auction. In court, the judge doesn't believe Stanley's claim that the shoes fell from the sky onto his head. And yet, that's exactly what happened. Oddly, though, Stanley doesn't blame the judge for falsely convicting him. Instead, he blames the whole misadventure on his "no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing-great-great-grandfather." Thanks to this benighted distant relative, the Yelnats family had been cursed for generations. For Stanley, his current troubles are just a natural part of being a Yelnats.

At Camp Green Lake, the warden makes the boys "build character" by spending all day, every day, digging holes: five feet wide and five feet deep. It doesn't take long for Stanley to realize there's more than character improvement going on at Camp Green Lake. The boys are digging holes because the treacherous warden is searching for something, and before long Stanley begins his own search—for the truth.

Fate conspires to resolve it all—the family curse, the mystery of the holes, the drought that destroyed Green Lake, and also, the legend of Kissing Kate Barlow, an infamous outlaw of the Wild West. The great wheel of justice has ground slowly for generations, but now it is about to reveal its verdict.

Having won a Newberry, I can only assume this book is more MG than YA, but the forced labor camp for young people aspect has often been compared to similar thematic elements in my own writing, so I figure it's another must read. No I have not seen the movie, and no I will not see the movie, since I can't stand Shia LeBouf.

What are you reading right now?

Reality Boy, by A.S. King, Red Carpet Event

Hey readers, I know I'm never here any more, and for that, I'm sorry. But my friend Amy, from Lady Reader's Bookstuff, is host an release event for one of my favorite books of the year. Which, in case you missed it, I did recently "review."

Gerald Faust knows exactly when he started feeling angry: the day his mother invited a

reality television crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he is still haunted by his rage-filled

youth—, which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle—and his anger issues have

resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education

room at school. 

Nothing is ever going to change. No one cares that he has tried to learn to control himself,

and the girl he likes has no idea who he really is. Everyone is just waiting for him to snap…and he is

starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that. 

 In this fearless portrayal of a boy on the edge, highly acclaimed Printz Honor author

A.S. King explores the desperate reality of a former child “star” who finally breaks free of his anger by

creating possibilities he never knew he deserved.

JL

A.S. King is

the author of the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner, Ask

the Passengers, Everybody Sees the Ants, a 2012 ALA Top Ten Book for Young Adults and Andre

Norton Award nominee, and the Edgar Award nominated, 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book </ span>Please Ignore Vera Dietz.



 She is also the author of the ALA Best Books for Young Adults Dust of 100 Dogs, an adult short story collection, Monica Never Shuts Up, and the upcoming REALITY BOY (2013). 

After

a decade living self-sufficiently and teaching literacy to adults in Ireland, she now lives in Pennsylvania

with her husband and children.

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