The Reckless Club

by Beth Vrabel

Overview

From award-winning author Beth Vrabel comes a new middle-grade Breakfast Club drama set in a old folks' home.

On the last day of middle school, five kids who couldn't be more different commit separate pranks, each sure they won't be caught and they can't get in trouble. They're wrong. As punishment, they each have to volunteer one beautiful summer day-the last one before school-at Northbrook Retirement and Assisted Living Home, where they'll push creamed carrots into toothless mouths, perform the world's most pathetic skit in front of residents who won't remember it anyway, hold gnarled hands of peach fuzzed old ladies who relentlessly push hard candies, and somehow forge a bond with each other that has nothing to do with what they've done and everything to do with who they're becoming. All the action takes place in the course of this one day, with each chapter one hour of that day, as the five kids reveal what they've done, why they did it, and what they're going to do now.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780762490400
Publisher:	Running Press Book Publishers
Publication date:	10/02/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)
Age Range:	10 - 12 Years

About the Author

Beth Vrabel is the award-winning author of Caleb and Kit, A Blind Guide to Stinkville, A Blind Guide to Normal, and the Pack of Dorks series. She can't clap to the beat or be trusted around Nutella, but indulges in both often, much to the dismay of her family. She lives in Texas, in the Dallas area.

Editorial Reviews

"The novel is tender, and it goes where Hughes' film never could have with its multicultural cast"—Kirkus Reviews

A five-problem novel that entertains and provides some life lessons.—School Library Journal

"A unique and thoroughly entertaining read by an author with a genuine flair for narrative storytelling."

—Midwest Book Review

"Reading Beth Vrabel's The Reckless Club, immediately transported me back to my youth. I had seen the book described as an updated Breakfast Club, and the comparison nailed it. It captured all the warmth and charm of a beloved movie from my youth and made it fresh for a new audience. Just about every reader can identify with someone in this book. FYI: I identified with more than one."
—Jonathan Rosen, author of Night of the Living Cuddle Bunnies

"Beth Vrabel proves herself a master of middle school milieu with this updated take on a classic story of breaking boundaries and finding common ground, brought to life with a diverse cast by turns funny, infuriating, and ultimately caring, that readers will be sure to identify with."—Melissa Wyatt, author of Funny How Things Change

From the Publisher

09/01/2018
Gr 5–7—In this middle school take on The Breakfast Club, five barely acquainted students are serving detention, each for a last-day-of-school transgression none of the others nor readers know about, by helping out at a nursing home on the last day of summer vacation before they enter high school. Each is assigned to an elderly resident and, in alternating chapters, their personalities and issues are revealed along with those of their assignees, even as they create mayhem, Keystone-cops fashion, by targeting and pursuing a nurse they suspect of stealing. Further, they are charged with creating and presenting a skit and writing an essay on what they learned, a tall order for one day. Chapter headings and physical descriptions set the characters up as types: Jason, "The Nobody"; Rex, "The Rebel"; Lilith, "The Drama Queen"; Wes, "The Flirt" and Ally, "The Athlete." Much of the narrative reads like stage direction, but personalities and setting are sufficiently authentic. Readers will recognize and identify with some of the students' situations and will be interested to learn just what wrongdoing each is guilty of and what their principal had in mind by bringing them together for such an unusual "punishment." VERDICT A five-problem novel that entertains and provides some life lessons.—Marie Orlando, formerly at Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

School Library Journal

2018-07-16
Vrabel's latest middle-grade novel explicitly remixes John Hughes' iconic 1985 movie, The Breakfast Club, for the Instagram generation.Five eighth-graders report for all-day detention for pranks they committed on the last day of middle school. Each comes from a different clique: Jason, an artistic white "Nobody"; Lilith, a talented Indian-American "Drama Queen"; Rex, an emo white "Rebel"; Wes, a charismatic African-American "Flirt"; and Ally, a high-achieving white "Athlete." They gather at an assisted-living home, where their strict principal introduces them to his sister, who runs the facility. The students are then each paired with a resident at the home, and they are also assigned an essay, to be completed by the end of the day. As in the film, these five teenagers who believe they have nothing in common bond over the course of the day as they open up and reveal their struggles: divorce, poverty, racism, bullying. And, similar to the film, the novel ends with a jointly written essay ("But after today, we just see each other. And we're going to change things, make them better, starting now") signed "The Reckless Club." The third-person narration mostly alternates among Jason, Lilith, and Wes, with Ally's and Rex's perspectives much later. The novel is tender, and it goes where Hughes' film never could have with its multicultural cast, but it's slow to start and cannot escape a preachy feel as the kids open up.Mostly accomplishes its feel-good goals. (Fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews