The Books
Beetle Boy
Hardcover, 32 pages
Published by Doubleday Books for Young Readers (1999-02-09)
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Amazon Description
Young readers will love this touching story about the importance of being recognized, heard, and loved:One morning Gregory Sampson wakes up to find that he has turned into a giant, purple-brown beetle! But no one except Gregory's best friend Michael notices the difference--not even Gregory's parents, his teachers, nor his little sister can see it. Michael wants his best friend Gregory back. But why did Gregory go from boy to bug? And why doesn't anyone seem to care?
One Potato Review
An antic and accessible retelling of Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Really. The subtext here is that everyone (except Gregory’s best friend Michael) is apparently too blinkered to even respond to Gregory’s condition, much less wonder over it. “Do you think I’ve always been a bug and no one ever noticed it before and I only just noticed it this morning?” he asks the indispensable Michael. There are surprising benefits to being a beetle - six legs and antennae to play soccer - though readers will conceivably recognize the anxiety of growing and becoming, even if they do not know enough to call it by a name.
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