"The Prince and his Ants (Ciondolino)" by Luigi Bertelli

(Sorry for the appalling picture quality; I couldn't find an image on the internet, so I scanned it in, and I had to do some amateur touching-up after it deteriorated when I shrank it. At least it's readable now!)

Sooooooooo, yeah. Let's begin with what I liked.

All the details about ants! Those were good. I seem to have a sort of passion for the non-gross members of class Insecta. Ants, bees (particularly bees), dragonflies, Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths); all that is great. I'm happy to report that the book got most of its details right (though bombardier beetles' attack is more of an acid spray, not poison gas).

Also, the horntail! It's so helpful, and it always shows up right when you need it. Got to be my favorite character.

But the main character, Gigino/Ciondolino, was an irrepressibly idiotic schoolboy. Remember Proverbs 6:6, "Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise"? Gigino was a sluggard, went to the ant, considered her ways, was like "nah my ways are better", and tried to insert his ways into the ants. He ends up |winning a decisive battle with his understanding of basic tactics, only to be catastrophically defeated when his ant enemies are like "thanks for the tactics bro"|. The guy had two major lessons to learn: "There's no such thing as a free lunch" and "Don't be an egotistical maniac". Near the end, once he got that down, I finally started liking him.

Also, I get that this was originally in Italian, but could it maybe have some actually pronounceable names?

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for mild violence. However, were the player not an idiot who |got his whole anthill killed/enslaved|, it would turn into an ant-farm-managing simulator fairly quickly. 

This thing gets 3 stars. You're not going to go any higher than that if I hate the protagonist. The book probably would have felt preachy at times, except that I was too busy being like "yes! this idiot needs to be taught a lesson!".

Favorite lines: 

   [Grantanaglia, Gigino's second-in-command] scurried away up the tree crying: "A caterpiller sister of an ant who is her brother; well now, this time he really is crazy."

   Page 273.

Link to the actual post.