Grasshopper on the Road

Summary

Grasshopper on the Road is an easy-reader book of six short linked stories about a grasshopper who decides one morning to follow a road wherever it leads, and about the creatures he meets on the way, each of whom has made one idea the whole of life. In "The Club," a crowd of beetles welcomes him to their We Love Morning club and chants the praises of dew and sunrise, until Grasshopper admits that he also likes afternoon and night; they throw him out, and he walks on. In "A New House," he bites into an apple for lunch and finds that a worm lives inside, angry about the hole in his roof. The apple rolls down a hill and smashes, and the worm sets off cheerfully to find a fresh one. In "The Sweeper," a housefly is cleaning his house, his porch, his path and then the road itself, raising dust into Grasshopper's eyes, and means to keep sweeping until the whole world is clean. In "The Voyage," a tiny mosquito who runs a ferry across a puddle he calls a lake insists that every traveler must ride in his boat. Grasshopper is far too big, so he picks up the boat with the mosquito in it, wades across in two steps, and sets it down on the far side. In "Always," three butterflies order him off the mushroom where they always sit at that hour, recite the unchanging routine of their days, and invite him to join it; he prefers a road with something new around each bend. In "At Evening," two dragonflies race past at sunset, pitying him for being so slow, but he answers that walking lets him see the flowers and the sky, and the day ends quietly under the moon. Harper & Row published the 64-page book in October 1978 as an I Can Read Book, with Lobel's own soft-toned illustrations on every page.

Top Lessons

• A club that shuts people out

  The beetles are happy together until Grasshopper says he likes afternoons and evenings too, and then they call him names and send him away. Lobel shows children that loving one good thing does not require hating everything else, and that a group can become unkind when everyone must think exactly alike.

• When a good habit takes over

  Keeping a house clean is good, but the housefly sweeps the road and wants to sweep the whole world. The butterflies' daily routine is pleasant, but they cannot let anything change. These stories show children that even good things need limits, and that a habit should serve us rather than rule us.

• Slow enough to see

  The dragonflies are proud of their speed, but they never notice the flowers or the sunset. Grasshopper walks slowly and sees it all. The last story teaches that going fast is not the same as getting the most out of a day.

• Kindness to the stubborn

  Grasshopper never mocks the mosquito's silly rule or the butterflies' fussy routine. He carries the mosquito across the puddle gently and declines the butterflies politely. He shows that a person can keep his own way without being rude to those who see things differently.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

There is no illness in the book. The housefly who must sweep until the whole world is clean, and the butterflies who cannot bear to vary their daily routine, are comic portraits of fixed habits; a clinician may enjoy them as gentle illustrations of compulsive and rigid behavior, but Lobel draws them as character types in the fable tradition, not as cases.

• The Sweeper

  The housefly sweeps outward from his house to the road and resolves to go on until the entire world is free of dust.