Wild Ride

by Keith Calabrese

Overview

Swindle meets Ferris Bueller's Day Off in this action-filled comedy!

No parents. No rules. No curfew.

Things are about to get dangerous...

The grownups are out-of-town, and for Charley Decker that means one thing: a last epic weekend with her older brother Greg before he leaves for college. Bring on the burgers, milkshakes, and movie marathons!

So when Greg ditches Charley for a date night downtown, she’s kind of crushed. Worse, he gets their mom's boyfriend’s super-expensive, super-rare Mustang towed and needs Charley’s help to get it back. What's an unsupervised seventh grader to do? Grab her best friends, sneak into the city, pull off the ultimate car heist, and then make Greg pay, of course!

Only now the Mustang has a new feature in the trunk: a stowaway named Mitch who’s guarding a world-changing secret. And a pair of seriously big, seriously scary dudes are after him.

What follows is an all-night race around the clock as Charley and her friends try to dodge the twin terrors, save Mitch, fix a sibling squabble...and get the Mustang home before morning!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781338743241
Publisher:	Scholastic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/05/2022
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	630L (what's this?)
Age Range:	8 - 12 Years

About the Author

Keith Calabrese is an author and screenwriter who holds a degree in creative writing from Northwestern University. A former script reader, he lives in Los Angeles with his wife, kids, and a dog who thinks he's a mountain goat.

Editorial Reviews

★ 03/07/2022

In a comic misadventure that recalls Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Charley Decker, 12, hopes to get in some quality time with her brother Greg, 18, when their mother heads to Hawaii with her boyfriend Derrick for the week. Instead, Greg and his girlfriend, Marisa Ng, take Derrick’s beloved convertible—a Raven Black 1964 World’s Fair Skyway Mustang—into downtown Chicago, where it is first impounded, then misplaced. To help Greg retrieve the car, Charley enlists her friends: voice of reason Wade Harris, authority-challenging Oona Adair, and ace impersonator Parker Nadel. But finding the Mustang isn’t the end of the road: when they discover a kidnapped man in the trunk, the siblings and their friends are drawn into the evil agenda of a ruthless tech billionaire. Calabrese’s (Connect the Dots) cinematic one-wild-night telling is chaotic and laugh-out-loud funny, but never at the expense of empathy and heart. As the cohort—which largely reads as white, with some names suggesting racial diversity—runs one wild scheme after another to thwart aimless “aggro-bros” and one of the world’s most powerful men, they also strengthen interpersonal bonds and overcome misunderstandings, growing closer to each other. Ages 8–12. Agent: Emily Mitchell, Wernick & Pratt. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Wild Ride:

* "Pedal-to-the-metal fun, with moments both scary and triumphant to go with plenty of laugh-out-loud left turns." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

* "Calabrese’s cinematic one-wild-night telling is chaotic and laugh-out-loud funny, but never at the expense of empathy and heart." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

Praise forConnect the Dots:

* "There are plenty of surprises in this caper with heart." — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Witty, assured, and full of heart, this book...is all sorts of fun." — Wall Street Journal

“Calabrese is a gifted storyteller, adept at character building and dialogue in this tech-centric mystery.” — School Library Journal

Praise for A Drop of Hope:

"A promising first novel that delivers its own measure of hope." — Booklist

"A story of friendship, character, and believing in good." — School Library Connection

"Every so often, a book comes along that reminds us of what we are capable of as human beings. It reminds us that we really can grow into our best selves. This is one of those books." — Gary D. Schmidt, Newbery Honor winner and author of Okay for Now

"Keith Calabrese has given us more than a drop of hope in this endearing novel; Ernest and Ryan and Lizzy not only make me want to move to the town of Cliffs Donnelly, their story has renewed my faith in humanity." — Kirby Larson, Newbery Honor-winning author of Hattie Big Sky

"A Drop of Hope is a rapid-fire novel, wishing-well deep and rich with relatable characters all discovering that forging strong friendships, families, and communities takes hard work, empathy, and just a little bit of luck." — John David Anderson, author of Mrs. Bixby's Last Day and Posted

From the Publisher

★ 2021-11-30
A joyride turns into a madcap, world-saving scramble after a group of kids discovers a kidnapped accountant in the trunk of a car.

The rare 1964 Mustang convertible his mom’s fiance left in the garage proves too much temptation for 18-year-old Greg Decker—but a date night with his girlfriend, Marisa Ng, quickly takes a nightmarish turn when the car is towed. First, he has to call on his smart-mouthed 12-year-old sister, Charley, for funds, and she brings friends to the rescue party. Then the car comes out of impoundment with groggy Mitch Rosenfeld trapped inside by a pair of dimwitted hired thugs. It seems that Mitch not only stumbled upon a trove of evidence that media giant Pangea’s unscrupulous billionaire CEO, Alton Peck, has been a bad boy, but also that Pangea’s about-to-be-released household “digital life assistant” is pure, privacy-busting spyware. The chase is on. But while events careen along at a gratifyingly manic clip, it’s the smart, surprising cast (most evidently White, with names cueing some ethnic diversity) that really puts the shine on this epic romp: As the story unfolds, each reveals hidden depths of heart, courage, self-knowledge, conscience, or character. Even the thoroughly villainous Peck comes off in the end as more pathetically flawed than evil.

Pedal-to-the-metal fun, with moments both scary and triumphant to go with plenty of laugh-out-loud left turns. (Fiction. 10-13)

Kirkus Reviews