"Courage only counts when you can count."
Since I read the Hunger Games series, I decided to try out Suzanne Collins's first book: Gregor the Overlander. I found it interesting and entertaining enough, even though I am by no means its intended audience. I'm not about to run out and read the second book in the five book series, but I may pick it up another time when I want something entertaining and easy to read.
Like the Hunger Games series, this series is pretty scary and violent for a YA book. In some ways Gregor the Overlander was even scarier to me, probably because of my fear of spiders of any size, let alone enormous ones. I was more freaked out than any ten year old when the huge spiders chased Harry Potter and I spent a couple of years dreading the enormous spider from the Lord of the Rings (because I anticipated it in the second movie, but it didn't arrive until the third one).
One moment in this book seemed to echo one of my favorite YA books, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. Compare the two quotes:
“Despair settled like a stone in the pit of Meg’s stomach. She had been so certain that the moment she found her father everything would be alright. Everything would be settled. All the problems would be taken out of her hands. She would no longer be responsible for anything.” - A Wrinkle in Time
"This was the scariest part of all. Gregor had thought he would get a parent back when he found his dad. Then he could stop having to make hard decisions. He could just be a kid." - Gregor the Overlander
Both Meg and Gregor learn a hard lesson early on: your parents can't fix everything, and eventually you have to start making hard decisions for yourself whether your parent is there or not.
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