GREGOR THE OVERLANDER, by Suzanne Collins

Quick Facts:
- by the author of The Hunger Games
- 320 pages

I picked up this book for two reasons: 1) it was authored by Suzanne Collins (The Hunger Games) and 2) it was recommended to me by a 6th grade student with such enthusiasm that he tried to lend me his copies of the entire series at once. When a book gets a young reader that excited, it cannot be ignored.

Gregor the Overlander was Suzanne Collins' first novel, and it's an entirely different animal than her more well-known Hunger Games series. Gregor is an 11-year old boy living with his mother and sisters in a tiny New York apartment. They live on the brink of poverty, and Gregor has been acting as the man of the house since his father disappeared nearly three years before. When his toddler sister Boots falls, like Alice through the rabbit hole, into another world through an air-conditioning grate, Gregor follows her and the adventure begins.

The world where Gregor and Boots find themselves is known as the Underland, so called because it lies deep in the Earth, below the "normal" human realm at the Earth's surface. Thus, upon arrival in this world, Gregor and Boots are "Overlanders". The Underland is populated by creatures familiar and yet terrifyingly overgrown. Bats, cockroaches, rats, and spiders all control land in the Underland, but they are enormous compared to their Overland counterparts. The cockroaches are large enough for Boots to ride on their backs! Bats are large enough for humans to fly!

Fan art for Gregor the Overlander.

And in a move that plays with the familiar fantasy trend of humans riding on the backs of dragons, the humans living in Collins' Underworld bond with and ride Underland bats. This sort of familiar fantasy element presented in a novel way is part of what makes the Underland fascinatingly creepy instead of horrifically creepy.

One of Collins' greatest accomplishment in this novel is that despite remarkable world building and high-fantasy adventure plot lines, Gregor and Boots remain firmly the focus and heart of the story. Gregor is a character that wins the readers empathy and affection from the very first chapter. Despite being bitterly disappointed about having to stay home for the summer and take care of two-year old Boots instead of going going to camp, all he says to his mother is:

"That's okay, Mom. Camp's for kids, anyway." He'd shrugged to show that, at eleven, he was past caring about things like camp. But somehow that had made her look sadder."
- Gregor the Overlander, page 3

This sets up one of Gregor's most defining character traits: consciously placing the feelings of others above his own. He's not a saint. He's not a sweetly self-sacrificing martyr. Rather, he's a very typical eleven year-old boy with typical eleven year-old boy reactions who acknowledges and then actively suppresses his more selfish inclinations in favor of a greater good. Following the above quote, Gregor's mother offers to keep his nine year-old sister, Lizzie, at home with him and boots. Gregor refuses this, saying that his mother should let Lizzie go to camp, and noting only that:

"[Lizzie] probably would have burst into tears if Gregor hadn't refused the offer." Gregor the Overlander, page 3

Another appealing aspect of both Gregor and Boots is that they are in no way extraordinary. Unlike the heroes of similar stories in which a child leaves the normal world for a fantastical one and discovers that he or she is actually fantastical as well, Gregor and Boots remain endearingly normal. Their successes are a product of their own natures and choices, rather than a birthright or newly-discovered powers. For example, Boots' natural and uninhibited affection for most living things plays a key role in the novel's plot, but it is something that is characteristic of Boots from the very beginning:

"The smooth black bumps [Gregor] had taken for rocks were actually the backs of a dozen or so enormous cockroaches. They clustered around Boots eagerly, waving their antennas in the air and shuddering in delight.

Boots, who loved any kind of compliment, instinctively knew she was being admired. She stretched out her chubby arms to the giant insects. "I poop," she said graciously, and they gave an appreciative hiss."
- Gregor the Overlander, page 19

Boots' affection and kindness towards the cockroaches later sets an example for both Gregor and the other characters they encounter, emphasizing one of Collins' main themes of pursuing peace and mutual understanding over conflict and discord.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this novel, however, is it's pacing. Collins' moves briskly from scene to scene, without the reader every feeling as though she's moving too fast. Gregor and Boots, for example, are in in the Underland by the beginning of Chapter 2, meaning that all of our heroes' backstory is covered in a single, 13-page chapter. And yet, as Gregor and Boots are tumbling through space towards the Underland, the reader feels already as if he knows them. The reader has already a strong sense not only of who they are as characters, but of the impact their disappearance will have on their exhausted and overworked mother and their invalid grandmother. Thus, their journey has stakes even at it's outset, and the reader is invested in those stakes.

This pacing is consistent throughout Gregor the Overlander, and the casual reader may not process exactly how many messages and themes are packed into Collin's efficient, nimble writing. I've heard parents dismiss this novel as a "beach-read adventure", concerned that their child should be reading denser literature that "requires them to think".

I take issue with this. There is an enormous amount of thinking provoked by Gregor's journey, both in terms of moral decisions and writing style. The structure of the novel is impeccable and could easily be used to highlight for students the plot elements that create an effective and engaging story. Though The Hunger Games deals with more complex and abstract political themes, Gregor is by far the better crafted story, and I can see incredibly rich discussion in comparison of the two by fans of Collins' writing.

Gregor the Overlander is the first in a five-book series, The Underland Chronicles, and I have taken my 6th grade friend up on his offer to borrow them. Gregor's first adventure made such an impression on me, though, that I'm a little hesitant to begin reading them. The bar for the rest of the books has been set incredibly high.