Everybody Sees Ants

Everybody Sees Ants

King, A.S. (2011). Everybody sees ants. New York: Little, Brown.

Lucky is an ironically named young man who finds himself at the end of his proverbial rope due to the bullying he’s been the victim of for years at the hands of a boy named Nadar, with no relief.  Lucky’s   parents are ill-equipped to help him because they are dealing with struggles of their own (his dad’s refusal to deal with his own father’s disappearance during the Vietnam War and his mother’s refusal to deal with their subsequent troubled marriage) and they just do not know how to help him so they basically just tell him to suck it up until it’s better.  As a method of escape, a very common theme in the novel, Lucky begins to dream of going to find his grandfather and also begins seeing the message-bearing ants.  After Lucky and his mother go to Arizona to visit even more dysfunctional family members, he meets someone who helps him gain the courage to stand up for himself when others can’t or won’t.  Because the reader must be able to suspend their belief in reality in order to fully appreciate this novel, Everybody Sees Ants would only be a good fit for readers who have reached that point in their mental development.