The Ant Bully

The Ant Bully by John Nickle
1999

     Lucas wears a dorky hat and funny glasses.  A lot of kids made fun of him, but Sid was the worse. He bullied Lucas constantly.  Since Lucas couldn't confront the much bigger and stronger Sid, he took it out on the ants.  Lucas uses his water gun to shoot the ants, flooding their colony.  One day, the ants got tired of it and attacked Lucas, pushing him inside their ant hole.  The Ant Queen put him on trial for destroying in seconds what took the ants hours of hard work to build.  He was found guilty and the shrunk him to ant size and made him work in the colony.  Lucas spends his days working with the ants and the Queen asks him one day to steal a human candy as part of his final test.  As Lucas and two other ants are about to steal the candy from his parent's kitchen, his father sees them and he's about to crush them. Just then, Lucas jumps at his father's face so his ant friends can escape.  When he returns to the colony, he's rewarded with going back to his regular size again.  When Sid sees Lucas, he's about to start bullying him again but the ants protect their new friend and Sid ends up shrunk.
      Although the text doesn't flow with ease, the adventure and bullying theme, make it a good read to share in the classroom.  This book was turn into a movie of the same title.