I love junior novellisations. I always pick up the junior novellisation of any kids' movie I enjoy, for the main reason that they are written while the films are still in production. That means that the JN's often contain deleted and altered scenes. Let's see...in here we get a scene right at the beginning showing Hova at her job, assigning life tasks to the ant pupas as they hatch. If one were to only watch the movie, one might wonder what kind of ant Hova even was. A forager? A scout? A soldier? No...so what was she supposed to be? This scene established that she was a Nurse Ant. I guess it was expendable, but I think it would have helped introduce Hova a bit better. This shot of Hova, from one of the downloadable wallpapers on the official site, is probably from that scene (it looks like commercial art rather than an actual still):

Another cut scene I would have liked to see (as I love Paul Giamatti's character) was one before Lucas' parents leave, where Stan comes calling and is thrown out, apparently not for the first time, by Mr. Nickle. Stan tries to convince Mr. Nickle that the house is infested, explaining that he may not know that as they just moved in. But Mr. Nickle's not buying it. Along with this scene on the cutting-room floor was a cute bit where Mr. Nickle was wearing his Bermuda shorts on his head to be goofy ("Nice hat," commented Stan as he left). Cut for time, I'm sure. I realise that most people would be able to figure out that when, in the film, Stan tells Lucas that his father had told Stan to have Lucas sign the contract if he "forgot," that he was lying and that it was a scam; but the scene where Mr. Nickle throws Stan out, I think, just makes that clearer. Here is a shot from that scene, found on both the official movie site and on DNA's site:

One more thing: apparently originally Lucas was going to gain telepathy when he became a "true ant" but that must have been cut (it sounds cool, but I think it may have been a little too cheesy, so I'm glad that was taken out). Other than what I've described there are no major differences from the film, and like all junior novellisations, it sort of rushes one through the story due to having to be so short.

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