Andrew Smith knew ever since his days as editor of his high school newspaper that he wanted to be a writer. After graduating college, he experimented with journalistic careers but found it wasn’t the kind of writing he’d dreamed about doing. He bounced around the world and from job to job, working at various times in a metals mill, as a longshoreman unloading bananas from Central America and imported autos from Japan, in bars and liquor stores, in security, and as a musician, before settling down permanently in Southern California. Here, he got his first “real job,” as a teacher in an alternative educational program for At-Risk teens, married, and moved to a rural mountain location. He prefers the seclusion of his rural setting, where he lives with his wife, son, daughter, two horses, three dogs, three cats, and one irritable lizard named Leo.
Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith
Grasshopper Jungle is a weird book in many ways. Not only is it literally weird (it is a book about a giant 6-foot praying mantis invasion, genetically modified testicle-dissolving corn, a secret underground bunker for humanity to reproduce itself in and a dog that’s lost its bark), but it is also literaryily weird. That is, it’s hard to define. The marketing team must’ve realised that too, because it has been toted as appealing to fans of John Green, Stephen King and Michael Grant. It doesn’t really narrow down what readers ought to expect from the novel, but what transpired was one of the most moving, gross and groundbreaking books in YA today.
Austin, our protagonist, is as sexually confused as the novel is genre... Read More
