''Two Bad Ants'' is a 1988 children's book written and illustrated by American author Chris Van Allsburg.

Plot summary

The title characters, while journeying through a human home, decide to exploit a

sugar bowl The Sugar Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in New Orleans, Louisiana. Played annually since January 1, 1935, it is tied with the Orange Bowl and Sun Bowl as the second-oldest bowl games in the country, surpassed onl ...

—full of

sugar cube Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double s ...

s—on their own rather than taking one sugar cube for themselves like the colony's queen (so each of the ants get one sugar cube and so does the queen ant). The two ants decide that instead of taking one sugar cube for themselves (like the other ants) and leave for their ant hill, they will live in the sugar bowl forever and "eat the tasty treasure forever". But during daylight, the ants are shoveled up by a giant sugar bowl spoon. They experience misadventures: they land in a cup of coffee (after a giant spoon shovels up the sugar cubes into the coffee and gets the ants out), almost get toasted on an English muffin (after mistaking it for a giant disc—a "hiding place disc"—with holes), fall into a sink, get threatened by its garbage disposal unit, and are nearly electrocuted when they enter an electric outlet. Chastened, they rejoin a line of ants carrying sugar cubes back to the colony.

Interpretations

Philip Nel Philip W. Nel (born March 29, 1969) is an American scholar of children's literature and University Distinguished Professor of English at Kansas State University. He is best known for his work on Dr. Seuss and ''Harry Potter'', which has led to hi ...

's analysis, a conflict between the book's plot and its illustrations leads to artistic tension. While the ants' return to the colony suggests "a victory for the bosses" and the narrative could be considered a " capitalist

parable A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. It differs from a fable in that fables employ animals, plants, inanimate objects, or forces of nature as characters, w ...

", the comparatively huge appliances in the kitchen, which terrify the ants, imply

conspicuous consumption In sociology and in economics, the term conspicuous consumption describes and explains the consumer practice of buying and using goods of a higher quality, price, or in greater quantity than practical. In 1899, the sociologist Thorstein Veblen co ...

. Nel likens the book's resulting ambiguity to the works of Magritte.

References

CHILDREN'S BOOKS; FELONS IN THE SUGAR BOWL
Sanford Schwartz, New York Times, November 13, 1988. Retrieved June 17, 2010

Footnotes

External links

Houghton-Mifflin Books - ''Two Bad Ants''
1988 children's books American picture books Fictional ants Houghton Mifflin books Picture books by Chris Van Allsburg Animal tales Children's books about insects {{Child-book-stub