Fire Ants

Cute and Quirky

This is a... strange, little book, but in a charming way. It features simplistic art of ants and other insects, which while not overly complex or detailed is still generally pleasant and slightly reminiscent of modern daytime cartoons for kids. The story itself is a bit hard to explain, though.

I suppose I could call it a comedic take on making a pun out of fire ants. Instead of the dangerous creatures of real life, these fire ants are ants who happen to be firefighters. The story relies heavily on puns and child-appropriate ‘dark humour' (for example, a water droplet puts out a fire but also destroys the ant-house at the same time) to move along, yet somehow it mostly works. In fact, the cited incident is what pushes the plot forward and leads to more amusement of the slapstick and fourth-wall-adjacent nature. The latter is hard to describe, but basically involves a narrator who occasionally gets acknowledged as a disembodied voice by the characters.

Overall, it's the kind of amusing quirkiness that I can appreciate. I'd rate this a 3.5 (rounded up to 4) because it feels unique to me. But it's not without flaws, such as none of the characters having names - just an ant, the chief fire ant, a fire ant, etc. - and the pacing being odd. There are also moments where the art tells more of the story than the text, but I'm not sure if that's much of a downside since the target audience will definitely be looking at the pictures anyway.