;)
A Book A Week: Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins
Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 9:19AM Gregor the Overlander (Book 1 of the Underland Chronicles) by Suzanne Collins, Scholastic 2003
I read this one out loud to the Sonars. Gregor is an eleven-year old New Yorker. His mom is at work. His sister Lizzie is at camp—which is where he’d rather be. Gregor’s dad has been missing for two years, seven months, and thirteen days. Gregor is at home, helping take care of his not-entirely-lucid grandma and his two-year-old sister Boots. Boots tags along while Gregor does laundry in the basement of their apartment building.
That’s where everything starts to go down. Underground.
In an innocent game of catch, Boots falls into an open air vent. When Gregor tries to catch her, they fall through a tunnel and discover a lost colony of humans and a world filled with human-sized bats, spiders, and rats. The struggle to get home turns into a matter of survival and the fulfillment of an old prophecy as the rats declare war on the underlander humans.
This is an entertaining story and Gregor is a smart, impressive kid trying to do the right thing. Even when it’s hard. I wondered how Sonar X11 would hold up under such incredible and dire circumstances with a toddler on his hip?
There’s no magic, but there is breathtaking adventure and some fighting violence. All three Sonars liked it, sometimes sitting on the edge of their seats through the conflict. When we get our hands on them, we’ll definitely continue the series.
A Book A Week, Read Something, Sonars in Words 
Reader Comments (1)
This book has one of my favorite lines in recent memory. A typical farewell for the underlanders is "Fly you high, Gregor, fly you high." Love it.