User blog:Cloudmonkey/Book Talk: Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

All Gregor's friends are going to Summer camp, but Gregor has nothing to look forward to but a long hot summer in New York City taking care of his two-year-old sister Boots while his mother is away at work. Things were different before his father's mysterious disappearance two years before, but Gregor tries not to think too much about it. Anyway he's eleven years old now, and camp is for kids.

Gregor is in the building's basement doing laundry, getting a break from the heat. Boots is there too, of course, where he can keep an eye on her. Gregor hears a metallic klunk and a giggle from Boots. She has opened an old air duct into the wall of the building. Gregor reaches her just as she disappears into the blackness of the air duct. Without thinking, he reaches into the duct for her and is falling.

They fall into empty space. The fall goes on and on. Gregor falls so fast, his clothes balloon around him. Boots giggles and squeals with pleasure. A glowing white mist forms around them. Gregor counts seconds. “One Mississippi... two Mississippi...” He gives up at seventy. The fall continues like a strange dream. At last an updraft slows them, the mist dissipates, and they land with a thump in darkness.

Gregor and Boots find themselves in a strange subterranean world, a world of giant cockroaches who revere Boots as a princess, humans who fly on sentient bats, vicious human-sized Rats, and the alien Spinners. Gregor learns that he and Boots may play a part in an ancient prophesy and that his father may have come to this strange land as well.