Year 9 Fairytale Unit: Text 2 - The Ant Bully

Term 2 Novel Study: The Ant Bully.

As part of our Fairytale Unit, 9KTf are currently reading their novel for Term 2, The Ant Bully.

We discussed the typical conventions of fairytale stories such as:

• Heroes
• Advisers
• Helpers
• Enemies
• Victims
• Villians
• Happy Endings
• Dreams
• Wishing

With "The Ant Bully", we found that the main hero in the story does not follow the conventional framework that most heroes do in fairytales. Instead it is the complete opposite.

A kid who hates ants finds himself living among the six-legged critters in this computer-animated comedy-adventure. Lucas Nickle is a ten-year-old boy whose family has just moved to a new town, and Lucas isn't enjoying it much -- he hasn't made any friends yet, his big sister ignores him, his parents are occupied with their upcoming vacation in Mexico, and his loving but slightly crazy grandmother is convinced space aliens are casing out the neighborhood.

To make matters worse, the local bully has found Lucas and is making his life miserable, so the boy looks for someone he can push around -- and he soon finds a large colony of ants in his yard. Lucas takes out his frustrations by stomping, drowning, and burying the bugs, little realizing the ants see him as a threat to their safety and aren't about take his attacks lying down. Zoc is a "wizard ant" who creates a formula that shrinks Lucas to the size of an insect, and the tiny boy is brought before the leader of the Ant Council and the Queen of the Colony to answer for his crimes against the ants.

Showing compassion, the queen sentences Lucas not to death, but to live among them and see how difficult their circumstances can be. Nurse Ant Hova is put in charge of looking after Lucas, and with the help of Scout Fugax and Forager Kreela, Lucas gets an eye-opening picture of how the other half lives -- just in time for Lucas to help the ants in an all-out battle against Stan a pest-control man brought in to get rid of the bugs.

As part of 9KTf's novel study for Term 2 we will look at the following points:

• Character
• Plot
• Theme

We will particularly focus on the theme of 'bullying'. The students will write their own personal response to bullying based on texts that they will read.