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Infestation
A contemporary take on the classic creature-feature genre. INFESTATION is a thrilling, fast-paced story that will leave your skin crawling. When Andy Greenwood is sent to the Reclamation School for Boys he expects the lousy food, mean drill sergeant instructors, and brutal bullies. What he doesn't expect is an infestation of weirdly large and aggressive ants, or the itching welts all over the staff and students. Even odder, Andy learns that kids never leave the school when they're supposed to. They just seem to get stuck there indefinitely.Following a ground-splitting earthquake, however, things quickly go from bad to horrifying. The school is overrun by monstrous bugs, and Andy himself comes face to face with mutant ants the size of humans, equipped with pinchers that can cut steel. Trapped in a cinderblock institutional building in the New Mexico desert, miles from civilization, Andy must figure out a way to save himself and the surviving boys from this nightmare.
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 8, 2007
9 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Timothy J. Bradley
48 books4 followersAward-winning, self-taught author/illustrator, published in both fiction and nonfiction. My books for kids are about nonfiction subjects like natural history and biology, and science fiction that is fast-paced and fun. My first novel, INFESTATION, is available from Scholastic.
I'm also an illustrator and designer of toys, museum exhibits, and compelling sci-fi and natural history imagery.
I'm also an illustrator and designer of toys, museum exhibits, and compelling sci-fi and natural history imagery.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
May 27, 2021
hurray!! i can finally write a real review for this! but never fear, the parade of creepy ant-pictures will remain for those of you who like to spend your day scrolling through giant streams of creepy ant-pictures.
you know who you are.
okay, so, infestation. this book is put out by scholastic, which makes the general age of its intended readership in the 8-12 range?? is that correct?? and given the subject matter and all-male cast, i would assume its audience is young boys.
so what does it say about me that i liked this one so much more than The Colony: A Novel which was a giant-killer-ant book for grown-ups. it probably says more about the author, actually. let's not make this all about meeeeee...
so this one takes place in a reform school in the middle of the new mexico desert. a pre-juvie-hall program for bad boys to get them back on the track to becoming fine upstanding citizens
andy is sent here because he has had bad luck with his foster families, and no one seems to know what else to do with him. he meets the evil headmaster, and some assorted pyros and bullies and general teen ne'er do wells, but not only that, the place seems to be experiencing a bit of a bug problem.
which is bad enough, but uh-oh, no one told them the school was built on an abandoned experimental genetics lab filled with mysterious chemicals and mutagens.
which the boys find when they discover a secret passageway leading to a warehouse deep in the bowels of the school.
boys love secret passageways. and also chemicals.
the boys are just feeling each other out, stepping to each other when the need arises, because in pre-juvie, kids gotta be hard and all that. and after an incident, several boys get sent to an overheated outbuilding for punishment, all glaring at each other and keeping their vulnerability hidden away.
but then, suddenly, ESSPLOSION!!!
and the school is more or less destroyed. and overrun with ants. not ant-ants, but lion-sized ants.
seriously.
this is problematic.
everyone else seems to be dead, either essploded or eaten by these giant ants.
but one thing bad boys know how do is survive.
and they can make weapons out of anything...
joining them in their busted-up school is an entomologist who was called to the scene to study the bug problem that had the exterminators scratching their heads.
together, he and the boys must find a way to kill the bugs and escape before they are all nommed up. (i keep calling them bugs - because i am a girl)
this book manages to do what The Colony: A Novel failed to do: weave the antformation into the narrative
in a way that is fun-learning and not info-dump.
for example:
But the size thing is really throwing me. Insects just can't grow this large. Part of it is the breathing problem, but another challenge would be their skeleton and muscles. Mammals like us have our skeletons inside our bodies. That provides a nice, stable framework for our muscles to attach to, and allows us to move around easily. Insect skeletons are on the outside of their bodies. Their muscles are attached to that exoskeleton. It works really well if you're small and light, but the largest insect around now, the Goliath beetle, grows about as big as your hand. Any larger, and their muscles can't provide enough force to move their body. Plus, you need lots of oxygen to fuel those muscles. You'd need efficient respiratory and circulatory systems to take in enough oxygen and pump it around the body to power the muscles.
gerry-the-entomologist serves as an ant expert, but also as a sort of role model to these troubled boys.
He'd never met anyone like Gerry before, so excited about just learning things. His excitement was contagious. It made Andy want to help find out more about the deadly creatures, despite the danger they were in. Andy had never been all that interested in science before, but maybe with a teacher like Gerry, things might have been different.
it's really a fun book with plenty of awesome action sequences, and room for a sequel in fewer than 200 pages!
i will read that sequel.
oh, how i will read it.
and three words to give you chills: giant flying ants.
yup. awesome.
OLD SCARY ANT REVIEW:
i read this, but i am not allowed to review it until 30 days before its publication! see you in march!
for now, please enjoy this placeholder:
come to my blog!
you know who you are.
okay, so, infestation. this book is put out by scholastic, which makes the general age of its intended readership in the 8-12 range?? is that correct?? and given the subject matter and all-male cast, i would assume its audience is young boys.
so what does it say about me that i liked this one so much more than The Colony: A Novel which was a giant-killer-ant book for grown-ups. it probably says more about the author, actually. let's not make this all about meeeeee...
so this one takes place in a reform school in the middle of the new mexico desert. a pre-juvie-hall program for bad boys to get them back on the track to becoming fine upstanding citizens
andy is sent here because he has had bad luck with his foster families, and no one seems to know what else to do with him. he meets the evil headmaster, and some assorted pyros and bullies and general teen ne'er do wells, but not only that, the place seems to be experiencing a bit of a bug problem.
which is bad enough, but uh-oh, no one told them the school was built on an abandoned experimental genetics lab filled with mysterious chemicals and mutagens.
which the boys find when they discover a secret passageway leading to a warehouse deep in the bowels of the school.
boys love secret passageways. and also chemicals.
the boys are just feeling each other out, stepping to each other when the need arises, because in pre-juvie, kids gotta be hard and all that. and after an incident, several boys get sent to an overheated outbuilding for punishment, all glaring at each other and keeping their vulnerability hidden away.
but then, suddenly, ESSPLOSION!!!
and the school is more or less destroyed. and overrun with ants. not ant-ants, but lion-sized ants.
seriously.
this is problematic.
everyone else seems to be dead, either essploded or eaten by these giant ants.
but one thing bad boys know how do is survive.
and they can make weapons out of anything...
joining them in their busted-up school is an entomologist who was called to the scene to study the bug problem that had the exterminators scratching their heads.
together, he and the boys must find a way to kill the bugs and escape before they are all nommed up. (i keep calling them bugs - because i am a girl)
this book manages to do what The Colony: A Novel failed to do: weave the antformation into the narrative
in a way that is fun-learning and not info-dump.
for example:
But the size thing is really throwing me. Insects just can't grow this large. Part of it is the breathing problem, but another challenge would be their skeleton and muscles. Mammals like us have our skeletons inside our bodies. That provides a nice, stable framework for our muscles to attach to, and allows us to move around easily. Insect skeletons are on the outside of their bodies. Their muscles are attached to that exoskeleton. It works really well if you're small and light, but the largest insect around now, the Goliath beetle, grows about as big as your hand. Any larger, and their muscles can't provide enough force to move their body. Plus, you need lots of oxygen to fuel those muscles. You'd need efficient respiratory and circulatory systems to take in enough oxygen and pump it around the body to power the muscles.
gerry-the-entomologist serves as an ant expert, but also as a sort of role model to these troubled boys.
He'd never met anyone like Gerry before, so excited about just learning things. His excitement was contagious. It made Andy want to help find out more about the deadly creatures, despite the danger they were in. Andy had never been all that interested in science before, but maybe with a teacher like Gerry, things might have been different.
it's really a fun book with plenty of awesome action sequences, and room for a sequel in fewer than 200 pages!
i will read that sequel.
oh, how i will read it.
and three words to give you chills: giant flying ants.
yup. awesome.
OLD SCARY ANT REVIEW:
i read this, but i am not allowed to review it until 30 days before its publication! see you in march!
for now, please enjoy this placeholder:
come to my blog!
January 19, 2014
I bought this for the boys in my classroom--a book that looks like something they would be interested in. Bugs!
Andy isn't having the best day. He's on a smelly bus on his way to a special boys' school for juvenile offenders and none of the other kids look like they want to become new buddies. Andy's day gets worse the further he drives out into the desert. They are miles of parched heat away from the nearest sign of civilization; there is a mean bully at the school; the guard in charge acts like a marine drill sergeant; and, the head of the prison is clearly crazy. Worse still, Andy learns this might not be a temporary assignment, but a permanent one--if he displeases the warden. To make matters worse, there is an earthquake, which is bad. What it reveals is worse: a secret lab experiment gone horribly wrong. A giant race of ants has invaded the school and is exterminating all the people in it. The boys all have to learn to work together to conquer a common enemy. What a great lesson!
The story felt like a throwback to a 1950's horror movie classic. Too many of today's horror stories rely on gore and inappropriate themes, but this was just good, old-fashioned scary. It was fast-paced and thrilling all the way through. The action never stopped. Andy is a likable character. His crime? Destroying the motorcycle of his abusive foster father, so we don't have to feel bad for cheering on a criminal. The other characters are sympathetic as well. They are not a bunch of hooligans, hoodlums, and hardened criminals--just misunderstood youth. Solid reading for young boys!
Andy isn't having the best day. He's on a smelly bus on his way to a special boys' school for juvenile offenders and none of the other kids look like they want to become new buddies. Andy's day gets worse the further he drives out into the desert. They are miles of parched heat away from the nearest sign of civilization; there is a mean bully at the school; the guard in charge acts like a marine drill sergeant; and, the head of the prison is clearly crazy. Worse still, Andy learns this might not be a temporary assignment, but a permanent one--if he displeases the warden. To make matters worse, there is an earthquake, which is bad. What it reveals is worse: a secret lab experiment gone horribly wrong. A giant race of ants has invaded the school and is exterminating all the people in it. The boys all have to learn to work together to conquer a common enemy. What a great lesson!
The story felt like a throwback to a 1950's horror movie classic. Too many of today's horror stories rely on gore and inappropriate themes, but this was just good, old-fashioned scary. It was fast-paced and thrilling all the way through. The action never stopped. Andy is a likable character. His crime? Destroying the motorcycle of his abusive foster father, so we don't have to feel bad for cheering on a criminal. The other characters are sympathetic as well. They are not a bunch of hooligans, hoodlums, and hardened criminals--just misunderstood youth. Solid reading for young boys!
December 15, 2015
Good creature feature. I thought it really got going at the end. I told the kids I booktalked it to that they will learn some science along the way. Good book for boys.
March 2, 2016
Loved :)
May 18, 2017
Andy is going to a school were special boys need to go.The school is in the middle of nowere in New Mexico,Andy meets Pyro and soon become friends.But later Andy meets Sheilds,Reilly,and other are sent to detention,and then an earthquake hits.These mutant ants now roam are the school halls. Meanwhile a man named Gary ,a biologist at a college runs into school and the kids.They soon make a plan to escape the school and from the ants.When their plan is set in action,Gary goes uncontested. But in the end they all got out.
September 6, 2018
Really good, kind of creepy but really good
Read
April 12, 2021Full review: https://monsterbookclub.com/2021/04/1...
April 15, 2013
http://theprettygoodgatsby.wordpress....
I'm a firm believer in the idea that there's no such thing as a Girl book or a Boy book, that boys can read - and enjoy - a romance just as much as a girl can read and enjoy a sports novel. That said, I think Infestation would definitely appeal more to boys, though I enjoyed it immensely.
Andy Greenwood has been through multiple foster homes and the decision is finally made to send him to the Reclamation School for Boys - the other option is a juvenile center. He doesn't expect an easy stay ahead of him, but his reality turns out to be far worse. After a disastrous first encounter with the headmaster, Andy begins to have his suspicions about the inner workings of the school and whether or not law enforcement is turning a blind eye to the headmaster's rulings.
The Arizona heat, hordes of tiny ants scurrying about the building, becoming prime target of the resident bully, and bunking with a boy named Pyro are just the start of Andy's problems. A food fight results in a stay in isolation along with a few other boys: Pyro, Reilly, Shields, Hector, & the bully himself Joey. As if that wasn't bad enough, an earthquake shakes the foundation to its core and unleashes a terror unlike anything the boys had ever seen.
When he first arrived at the school Andy learned it was originally built as a lab of some sort. Unfortunately for the boys, the experimentation hasn't stopped. The earthquake upended massive containers of various chemicals and those tiny little ants aren't so tiny anymore. They suddenly find themselves the only ones left alive - along with a biologist Dr. Gerry. Somehow they'll have to find a way to survive both the deadly heat and the rampaging bugs.
Sometimes I'm in the mood for a fun, easy read. Infestation was just the book I was looking for. To me, this was Goosebumps-lite. A group of boys battling nightmare-ish man-sized bugs? What better way to spend an afternoon!
Readers looking for parents in YA might be a bit discouraged: once the bugs start attacking, there's only one adult left and for the majority of the novel he's unconscious. However, I was able to look past that and enjoy the ride.
Rapid-fire pacing, non-stop action, and VERY cool charts & diagrams will ensure Infestation finds many fans. Also, the epilogue hints at a possible sequel. If so, count me in.
I'm a firm believer in the idea that there's no such thing as a Girl book or a Boy book, that boys can read - and enjoy - a romance just as much as a girl can read and enjoy a sports novel. That said, I think Infestation would definitely appeal more to boys, though I enjoyed it immensely.
Andy Greenwood has been through multiple foster homes and the decision is finally made to send him to the Reclamation School for Boys - the other option is a juvenile center. He doesn't expect an easy stay ahead of him, but his reality turns out to be far worse. After a disastrous first encounter with the headmaster, Andy begins to have his suspicions about the inner workings of the school and whether or not law enforcement is turning a blind eye to the headmaster's rulings.
The Arizona heat, hordes of tiny ants scurrying about the building, becoming prime target of the resident bully, and bunking with a boy named Pyro are just the start of Andy's problems. A food fight results in a stay in isolation along with a few other boys: Pyro, Reilly, Shields, Hector, & the bully himself Joey. As if that wasn't bad enough, an earthquake shakes the foundation to its core and unleashes a terror unlike anything the boys had ever seen.
When he first arrived at the school Andy learned it was originally built as a lab of some sort. Unfortunately for the boys, the experimentation hasn't stopped. The earthquake upended massive containers of various chemicals and those tiny little ants aren't so tiny anymore. They suddenly find themselves the only ones left alive - along with a biologist Dr. Gerry. Somehow they'll have to find a way to survive both the deadly heat and the rampaging bugs.
Sometimes I'm in the mood for a fun, easy read. Infestation was just the book I was looking for. To me, this was Goosebumps-lite. A group of boys battling nightmare-ish man-sized bugs? What better way to spend an afternoon!
Readers looking for parents in YA might be a bit discouraged: once the bugs start attacking, there's only one adult left and for the majority of the novel he's unconscious. However, I was able to look past that and enjoy the ride.
Rapid-fire pacing, non-stop action, and VERY cool charts & diagrams will ensure Infestation finds many fans. Also, the epilogue hints at a possible sequel. If so, count me in.
July 2, 2014
Summertime, with all its creepy-crawlies, is not the ideal time to read this book! Andy is sent to a reform school in the desert of New Mexico, and there's something strange going on there. It's not just the creepy director, or the resident bullies, or the cafeteria "food". Andy's roommate Pyro takes him to a secret storeroom which contains some clues to past activities at the facility--past activities that are now making an impact on the facility. This is a story that is driven by action. Andy and his friends develop a bit as characters throughout their trials in the story, but character development is not the focus of the story. Bradley knows his subject--bugs--and creates an action-driven, totally creepy and suspenseful story. This book reads like a cross between Holes by Lois Sachar and Escape from Furnace by Alexander Gordon Smith, and would be an excellent choice for fans of either of those books. Some blood and gore. Gr. 5-8
June 8, 2014
Infestation was so much fun! Like a B movie at the drive in-- this is sci-fi thriller with great kid appeal. Boys at the Reclamation School--the last stop before "juvie", face drill sergeant-like guards and begin to notice some unusual things. When an earthquake strikes, it unleashes an infestation---run for your life! Will they survive? Will they be able to return to society as law abiding youth? Will the doctoral student sent to investigate finish his dissertation (of course he does!) Is this really the end of these horrible monsters? Hmm...I suspect there may be a sequel, and I will read it.
July 7, 2016
Creepy SF MG novel with a lot of unexpected twists and turns. Twelve year-old Andy is sent to the Reclamation School for Boys after running away from his foster home. Things go from unpleasant to horrifying at the school when a massive earthquake hits the school. Only Andy, a few other boys at the school, and a scientist named Gerry survive. They soon realize that all of the other school staff and students were victims to giant man-eating mutated bugs. The boys need to work together to make it out alive. Chills went down my spine several times while reading this one.
May 26, 2015
Infestation will be a hit for some of my students, so I am giving it 1 more star than my personal rating would be. On the positive side it is an action-packed, easy to read book. On the negative side the characters are not fully developed, but like I said, most jr high level students will think this book is crawling with suspense.
April 14, 2016
Infestation is a book about a group who finds out about this nest with Ants in it.
These are not just ordinary ants, they are these giant ants that invade.
They try to get rid of them and one of the way is by turning the fire alarm on
and then that alerts the ants and they start fighting each other.
These are not just ordinary ants, they are these giant ants that invade.
They try to get rid of them and one of the way is by turning the fire alarm on
and then that alerts the ants and they start fighting each other.
July 25, 2013
As a lover of science fiction, my biggest complaint has always been that most science fiction writing lacks a good story with compelling characters. Tim Bradley’s new sci-fi novel delivers on every level and then some. A real page-turner from start to finish, I just couldn’t put this book down.
July 25, 2014
I was surprised this book was chosen for the 2014-2015 MCBA list. I read it to my son, who is going into the 6th grade, and he enjoyed the plot but I was a bit disappointed. The characters were not as developed as I would have liked and science fiction is not my preferred genre.
July 13, 2016
Really liked this book, read it about ten times. Kind of leave you with a cliff hanger at the end, wish they'd make it a serious. Also they never mentioned anything about the queen until the files at the end
February 12, 2016
Run while you can!!!
Review to come. Like others, will honor agreement to stifle self until the okay is given.
Will say book is geared for middle-graders.
Review to come. Like others, will honor agreement to stifle self until the okay is given.
Will say book is geared for middle-graders.
August 5, 2014
Full of boys, action, and bugs--it's easy to envision recommending this one to your classic "reluctant reader." Not as vibrant, funny, or surprising as Grasshopper Jungle, but different audience too
September 18, 2014
Lots of true science, which I enjoyed.
October 27, 2014
I won't look at ants the same way for a while! Belonging to a genre I tend to avoid, this is a sci-fi story I can handle. Can't wait to share it with 6th grade boys. It is great!
April 29, 2015
i loved it
June 24, 2015
Some of the plot is predictable, but it is still an interesting read especially if you are into bugs!
August 11, 2015
Didn't finish. Dumb.
September 1, 2015
Lots of action. A good pick for the 5th graders looking for books like Maze Runner or Hunger Games.
January 28, 2016
* a hoosier book * I made commercials for all the Hoosier books this year. You can check this one out at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7f3Kg...
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews