the Gregor Series by Suzanne Collins

Do these sound like the ingredients for a page turner for a 67 yo: giant cockroaches, 6 feet long, giant bats, able to carry people on their backs, and giant rats 6 to 10 feet tall, that slash and gash the humans? Ew! Toss in humans with purple eyes and skin so pale you can see their veins, add a baby still in diapers named Boots--and for a protagonist, why not an 11 yo boy named Gregor? Oh, yeah, and these creatures all live deep below New York City, where the sun doesn't shine.

Those are the characters in the Gregor series, Gregor the Overlander, Gregor and the Prophecy of Bane, and Gregor and the Curse of the Warmbloods. Those three little books (about 5" X 8", 300 pages) not only kept me reading for hours after I had planned to go to sleep, but made me weep at times, because of the nature of the dilemmas Gregor found himself in--which even for an adult would require deep introspection and examination of one's values to sort out.

Gregor had been a sad child for a long time--ever since his father disappeared a few years ago. His father taught science and now the family--Gregor, his sister Lizzie, and the baby, Boots (his father disappered before she was even born), have to subsist on what his mother can earn as a waitress. In the first book, Gregor the Overlander, Gregor is dismayed to find that pale-skinned humans with the purple eyes think he is The One--some sort of flash warrior who will go on a quest and save their land from the Gnawers--the huge rats that always threaten the humans with extermination. But since the quest may lead him to his father, if he is still alive, Gregor reluctantly agrees to go. If it seems that the odds are completely against a skinny light brown kid from a tenement in New York battling 10 foot rats, the discovery, during a casual sort of tournament, that he is what is known down there as a Rager, evens the odds. Ragers are creatures with a special gift--the ability to kill efficiently and effortlessly--sort of like a robot. The gift, far from reassuring Gregor, disturbs him. It is not entirely under his control, and creates a dichotomy of values within him that he must struggle with throughout the series.

My 10 yo. granddaughter requested the 4th book (Gregor and the Marks of Secret)of the series for Christmas. (On delivery I discovered she had actually already read that book, but wanted to own it, so it would be there, on the shelf next to the 3 others, whenever she wanted to take it to bed for another read.) I don't like to give a gift that I have not personally vetted, so (ahem!) I borrowed her 3 books and started to read them. Got waylaid, but not until after I was thoroughly convinced that of course she must have the 4th. Which I look forward to, myself, when I can borrow it. And, oh, there is another volume coming out in May. By then I will need a fix!