Just Finished Reading Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

Before Suzanne Collins wrote her celebrated young adult science fiction series The Hunger Games, she produced a five-volume children's fantasy series titled The Underland Chronicles.  They feature young Gregor, a New York City boy who one day discovers a secret passageway to "Underland" through a hole in his family's basement laundry room.  This special hidden place under the Earth's surface is populated by humans and various human-sized, English-speaking animals like rats, bats, cockroaches and spiders...that aspect of it reminded me of Roald Dahl's 1961 children's novel  James and the Giant Peach while the underground secret world made me think of Neil Gaiman's 1996 adult book Neverwhere ...click on the titles' links to access my reviews of them.  I just finished reading the first book, Gregor the Overlander, from 2003.  Gregor, whose father mysteriously disappeared two years earlier, is stuck at home caring for his little baby sister Boots...the two accidentally fall through the hole and they're suddenly in the thick of all the ongoing drama, with a mysterious prophecy portending the unfolding of events.  I've always had a soft spot in my heart for stories with secret portals to other realities, but I wasn't too thrilled with talking roaches and rats...still, I get it: this is a children's series.  By far my favorite parts of the story were when Boots was featured, acting in such an endearing, spontaneous manner as a little baby full of wonder at the new world around her...and sometimes full of impetuous, selfish angry outbursts as well.  I'm planning on sweeping through this series in the next few weeks, spacing my readings between other books.  Collins wrote the installments quickly, to her credit: if you're a little kid and read the first book that came out, you don't need to be waiting three-to-five years for the next one: she finished writing the last book in 2007, a year before she began her Hunger Games project.  Yes, even at 64 years I'm a sucker for children's books and this series promises to be entertaining...