Roger Mantis

by Tom Alan Brosz

Baseball is Roger McGillicutty’s whole life. That is until he wakes one Saturday to find he is no longer a normal eleven-year-old boy. He's a five-foot-tall praying mantis.

Roger has school on Monday, the carnival comes to town next week, and his baseball team is poised to play their biggest rival in one week. Being a giant bug will seriously cramp Roger’s style!

To Roger’s surprise, his parents and friends are supportive. Even his dog isn’t spooked. But not everyone’s thrilled about Roger’s change. Some people are frightened and others would like nothing more than to squash him into the ground like the bug he is.

And when Little League officials oust Roger from baseball, his world collapses.

When a reporter from the city comes snooping around rumors of a man-sized baseball-playing praying mantis, Roger must choose between hiding his true self or being the hero he's always wanted to be.

Genres: Fiction

267 pages, Paperback

First published April 3, 2019

About the author

Tom Brosz actually is a rocket scientist (sort of), having worked for years in aerospace as a systems designer. He also wrote and published a newsletter on the private space industry back before it was cool.

Reviews

[J. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going into this book, I had to work really hard not to be freaked out by the concept- a boy wakes up as a giant praying mantis and from the book summary, I had a pretty good guess that this was going to be a permanent situation. I really like bugs and I love praying mantises but I think my creep-out reaction was from reading Kafka's "Metamorphosis" as a teenager and since cockroaches are the one bug that freaks me out and Metamorphosis is a creepy story, I still shudder thinking of that book. Roger Mantis is a much better book! I love the positive message and the lessons taught. It's a good allegory for life and how sometimes we are given life changing problems that aren't going to go away but that doesn't mean life is over or we should moan and cry and give up. Roger learns about his new situation and looks for the good that can come from it. Definitely a great thing to teach kids and probably a story I'll read aloud to my kids.
PS to the author- Thank you so much for not turning Roger into a cockroach!