My Favorite Ants

I don't like ants.

Especially the tiny ones that invade my kitchen, taking over the dirty dishes and the trash if I don't get rid of it RIGHT AWAY.

But strangely enough, my all-time favorite book is about ants. It's called A Rustle in the Grass.

Here's the story behind how this book and I met. I was nine years old, in the fourth grade. We had just moved and my mom wanted to go the local flea market and see if they had anything valuable. I had a quarter, and thought for sure I'd be able to buy a chair, a mirror, a shirt, or something.

The only things I found for a quarter were in a dusty barrel. Books. I sifted through them, but none looked interesting. Most were :::cough::: um, adult literature. At the last minute, I grabbed this book. (See picture.) Bought it, took it home, tried to start reading it. It was slightly too advanced for me. I put it down.

But I picked it up again a few months later, shortly after my tenth birthday. Still in the fourth grade. This time, I managed to read it. It took me a long time. A month, I think, and the book's not that long.

I loved it. Loved loved loved it. There's no way to explain to you the life lessons these ants teach. It's so obviously not scientific, since all the ants are male and we all know worker ants are female. And I doubt they go around telling stories and talking to each other. Duh. (That's a rant, because someone on Amazon gave it a low review because it wasn't very realistic. For real???)

I read it again in fifth grade. Again in sixth grade. Towards the end of the sixth grade school year, Ms. Jones (my teacher) must've been running out of things to read to us during reading time after lunch. She asked us if we had any books we'd like the class to read. Of course I brought this book, but either I was at the end of the queue, or she didn't think it looked good. It got bumped back and back while stupider stories got read (in my opinion, of course). Finally, after my begging, she started reading it to us on the last week of school. Needless to say, I don't think we finished a chapter.

But my teacher liked it enough to ask to borrow it over the summer. I said yes, and she was good enough to get it back to me. I passed it on to my little sister.

Two years later, my little sister was in Ms. Jones' sixth grade class. She walked into the room, and low and behold, on the classroom bookshelf was a classroom set of A Rustle in the Grass. Twenty-six lovely copies for the class to read. Boy, did I feel good when she told me that!

When my sister and I first saw the preview for A Bug's Life, however many years ago, our first thought was, "They're making a movie of it! How cool!" Of course, it wasn't our favorite book, which was way disappointing.

I read the book every year until I went to college. Then I read it once every three years. Too many other reading assignments. I can't seem to retain a copy, I keep giving them away. The last time I had a copy was four years ago, when I read the book to my husband. I believe he mailed it to his brother to read. Mark loved the book.

It's astoundingly good. Get it. You'll love it. I can't really say what it's about--you'll think it's not worth reading. I mean, who cares about ants, anyway? You can see my review on Amazon (funny story--a friend of mine, named Sasha Fletcher, asked me to help her set up an account on Amazon. I did something wrong. Not sure what, but all of my reviews were renamed as Sasha Fletcher after I did that. I tried and tried to fix it, and eventually gave up and created a new account.). Anyway, it says it's by Sasha Fletcher, but it's by me.

I don't know much about the author. As far as I know, he's only written two books, and the other wasn't that great (I didn't finish it). He's an actor, a movie director. But this book is good. My favorite to this day.

And yours? What's your favorite? Is it a bestseller, or something obscure that no one's heard of?